Does This Suit Make me Look Fat?

Well, does it?

Actually it kind of makes you look like a big egg with legs.

Or perhaps a bird, a white giant parakeet with that mask forming a beak.

The masks hurt. At least mine did. It has this band across the nose that really pinched.

It is hard to breathe in these things when you have a totally clear head, but coming off the flu makes it a real ordeal. They weren't meant for running noses, I'll tell you that. I had to go outside several times and blow my nose.

That's right, I came down with the flu right after our last trip, which was on December 22. I wasn't completely over it yet. On top of that, I woke with arthritis flaming through my left foot. How great was that? I could barely stand up and I was going for a day of stand up work. I popped a couple Tylenols and left my foot to drugs and God.

What am I doing in this contraption anyway? Oh, didn't you know this is the latest style from Calvin Klein? Actually it is more in line with Calvin Slime or the House of Mold. We were up on the Island above Seaside Heights gutting out the houses flooded in Hurricane Sandy. This suits protect our clothes and us from contamination and the masks protect our lungs. This house had a lot of black mold.

This is the job to have if you like hard work fraught with some possible risk, long days and low pay. The pay is zero, zip, nana, but the reward is great when you see the gratitude in the homeowners' faces.

Here we are, gathering at 5:15 in the morning to make the hour and half trip north. Rick, the name of the man in the middle, is having some coffee against the chill (a balmy 30 degrees this morning).

I skip that particular treat when I head off on these trips. There aren't any working toilets where we're going and porta-potties are few and far between and I'm in my 70s and you know what age can do to your drainage system. I don't need any coffee helping with that.

Excuse the indelicacy here, but usually I make a run to the restroom at the church in Toms River where we gather before heading out for the day. This didn't work well this morning. I have a bashful bladder and the restroom at the church had one stall and one urinal. The stall was occupato, but I got to the urinal first. Unfortunately for me, Rick was right behind me and stood near waiting. This caused my inner-workings to go on bashful strike and I left with anything I entered with.

We went and did the first house, which was on the mainland.

Then after a couple hours we finished up and headed for the island. We stop at a furniture store (pictured left) to make sure everyone in our convoy is present before going over the bay bridge to the island. Our leader pulled into a Wawa, though, before we got that far. Several people headed inside to use the restroom. Some of us, like myself, decided to wait and use a port-potty. They had one at the furniture store lot and I figured I'd hit it and be good for the rest of the day. Surprise! When we got to the furniture store that port-potty was no longer there.

WE worked until 4:30 and then had to leave the island before the police shut it up for the night. Our group stopped at a restaurant to eat on the way home. I figured at this point I'd held it this long, I'd make it home, except the waitress kept refilling my Pepsi. It was a big glass, after all, this was Jersey, not New York City where that elitist snob Mayor Bloomin'boob runs the food police and bans big sodas. (The first of the  Pepsis is pictured on the right with its silly straw.)

When she brought the third Pepsi I decided it was time to head to the pit stop.  I know, I didn't have to drink all that, but waste not, want not. There are thirsty children somewhere in the world who would love three pints of Pepsi.

I make light, but it is a sad situation for all those people caught by Hurricane Sandy. It was just before Halloween they were devastated, over two months ago and so far mostly what they have gotten from the government, local, state and federal, are excuses and the runaround.

In the Danger Zone

I woke up this morning in the danger zone. I feel better.

I feel a little better, that is.

You know that time when ill that you know the fever broke, the hills crested and wellness is just around the corner.

In other words, the Danger Zone.

I'm still blowing my nose and hacking now and again. My legs are merely trembly rather than wobbly when I stand. I feel much better in comparison to yesterday, which means I am on the cusp of deceiving myself leading to disasters results such as a resurrection of my symptoms.


I felt the forward scouts of this germ invasion last Friday evening. My wife was suffering for what seems most of the month with her own battleground of coughs and sneezes. I arrogantly believed I would escape notice by the enemy, foolish man that I am. But her throes of agony awoke me late Friday evening and I left the bedroom to her, both of us hoping the NiteQuil would soon dope her to snooze land. I retreat to the computer across the hall.

Immediately I detected this slight roughness in my throat. It wasn't sore, just as they say, scratchy. Was something up? Oh, I hoped not. I did not want to be sick. That is a silly statement, I supposed. Who wants to be sick?

Besides it was inconvenient. I had commitments, I had responsibilities and I had expectations. It was only a few days until Christmas. I wanted to enjoy Christmas. I looked forward to the first Christmas Eve Service at my new church (literally new, new to me and new to itself having only begun last August).

When my eyes popped open at 4:00 AM Saturday morning I could feel that threat in my throat, a bit more insistent I thought, but perhaps once up it would fade away. Sometimes it does. I didn't have time to worry or fret about it. My daughter and I were heading out the door at 5 AM to head north to Toms River, New Jersey to aid in hurricane relief. It was to be only a half day this week.

It was cold and windy. We worked until just after 1:00. I forgot about my throat, but I did run out of steam quicker that day. I couldn't sustain much push as I tried to loose stubborn floor tiles that had to come up and off a floor. I kept wanting to stop, to gulp some water, anything but push that scraper bar into those stubborn, resistant squares beneath my feet.

My wife and I went out to dinner Saturday evening. It was a very chill evening, but I wore a light jacket, figuring I would only be running between the car and the restaurant with minimal exposure to the elements. Unfortunately, on the way home my wife asked to stop at a supermarket because she needed some additional ingredients for Christmas dinner. She had originally planned to go on Sunday, but decided as long as we were out...well you know. It was only a few things, she said, she would hurry.

My wife and I live in some kind of parallel universe of time. If I go to the supermarket for a few things in my particular universe it means ten-fifteen minutes in and out. If my wife says she just wants to get one thing, let's say some ice cream, then time becomes a 78 rpm record played on a 331/3 turntable. If it is a half-hour its fast, but count on at least 45 minutes. She says a few things, then watch an hour pass. And so I waited in the car, huddled in the car, for nearly an hour in my too light jacket.

Surprisingly, Sunday morning I didn't feel so bad. I did sleep much longer than usual. I chalked that up to the work up in Seaside Heights.  My throat still had that scratch, but it seemed no worse. I was confident I was going to escape the war - until about noon.

I had agreed to video the sermon and I guess I was so focused on keeping my camera on the pastor's face and not his feet, that I took no notice of my deteriorating body. But after I came home I sure took note. By Sunday night I was miserable.

It did not improve overnight. I was a mess on Monday. I did not feel like moving. I was coughing until my lungs felt more outside my chest than inside. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe.

My wife, meanwhile, was not really over her own bout, but she was busy preparing her dishes for Christmas. By afternoon she was tired and stressed. She certainly didn't want to make dinner. She didn't  even want to pick up something. She wanted to get out of the house and be waited on and relax. So we went out to dinner and not to the Christmas Eve Service.

It snowed fiercely as we drove to our favorite restaurant just over the Pennsylvania border a few miles. Surprise, surprise, when we arrived we discovered they were closing at 6:00 that night, Christmas Eve you know. They gave us menus, but we declined because I didn't want them held up because of us when they were ready to go home for the Holiday. We left and found a Lone Star that was open. But I was on the verge of collapse by the time we ate. I went home, chugged a NiteQuil and went to bed. I would not have been fit company at our Christmas Eve Service.

Thus I was ill over Christmas. I got no succor that day either. I got up and cleaned the whole house top to bottom to spare my wife any additional stress or bother. And now today, Thursday I do believe, two days past, I feel better. It puts me in the danger zone. As stated, I feel better; I don't feel great. But I have to fight my tendency not to wait the disease out. I am always too quick to try and take back my normalcy, to rush into the morning cleaning and scrubbing of the kitchen as is my daily habit, a chore followed by a four or five mile walk in the park.

No, I am forcing myself to do as little physical activity as possible today and let the cure take place. The enemy is on the run, I know. Give it a day or two of retreat and I will once again be fit and firm, that is if I keep my head, and body, down in the danger zone.

Roots of Our Tree Worn Useless by Time

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, "Sound of One Tree Clapping in the Theater of Time".

I do physical work these days. Oh, it isn't hard labor, I'm not breaking rocks on a chain gang nor am I hoisting 100 pound sacks of cement on my shoulder to load on trucks. I often am lifting and moving cartons that can weight up to 50 pounds, hanging stuff on rods above my head or climbing a ladder to place some heavy object on a 12 foot high shelf.  You never sit down, I am always on my feet.

It is exactly what I wanted after I was forced into "retirement" a decade ago. I enjoy it.

This isn't my first experience with physical employment, but most of my prior brushes were in my youth, doing stoop labor in farm fields or loading flatbed trucks. Most of my adult life my jobs have been mental. Writing itself is a mental chore. The heaviest thing you lift might be a ream of paper to put in the printer.

Several of the positions I held over the years were challenging and I'm not going to indulge in any false modesty to sound humble, I enjoyed meeting those challenges because I was a fairly smart guy. One of my strong suits was my memory. As a child and a younger man I had an almost photographic memory. I say almost, because I believe a truly photographic memory is when someone can look at a piece of media and remember it verbatim all the time. I could do that with things that interested me, not so much with things that didn't. If this had not been the case I would have done better in Geometry and conjugating latin verbs.

Memory is highly useful for a writer. Things written are pulled from experience, so it helps to remember those experiences. If you write a novel, it is important you can remember what a character did on page 10 that effects what happens to that character on page 210.

Walking through life is much like walking through this woods. Memory helps you find your destination down the many trails, often blind paths.

Now someone may say bad comparison. "You aren't walking to any destination. You are just walking in a circle."

Wrong, I am walking toward a destination. First of all, I am trying to find my way down to the river. Secondly, I am looking for new trails to explore and what kind of secret scenes they may reveal and lastly, I will be seeking an exit destination route out of these woods back to my car. The only reason you think I am aimlessly walking in a circle is I expect to find all my destinations within a couple hours.

If you pause to consider it most of what we do in life is going in a circle, it is just over a longer time segment. You rise in the morning and drive to your workplace for a few hours and then drive back home. You walk to the grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread and you walk back home with your purchase. You fly to Los Angles for a six day vacation and then you fly back home where you drive to work the next day and then drive back home. Circles, over and over and over again throughout your whole life. You don't really go straight to a destination and not circle back unless you move to a new home. I know something of that, probably more than the majority of anyone reading this. I've done that move to a new home 18 times in my life.

When I go out walking I look for new paths and think of new opportunities to explore and to stifle monotony. It is like going through life finding a new job. You find a new destination, yes, but you circle back and start that circling all over again. But it still helps to remember where those destinations are and how to get there, and get back if necessary. It helps to be able to remember where you have been and where you are going, just like walking these isolated trails.

These trails may look much alike, but there are subtle differences and if you can't remember this, you get lost.

Speaking of memory, do you remember Golden Guy. He was standing by the river at the beginning of my post,  "Sound of One Tree Clapping in the Theater of Time"? He was the mystery man or statue that appeared in the photograph, but hadn't been seen by the photographer when he took the picture. Suddenly, here was this lone figure standing on the icy shore holding something in his hand, a bow, a fishing pole or a staff.

Where did he come from? Why was he there? Why hadn't I seen him when I lined up the camera shot of the distant geese?

I didn't know the answer until I enlarged the shot.

The mind is a marvelous instrument, but it can play tricks upon itself. There was no man; there was no statue. It was but the reflective beam from the early morning sun off the ice and water, an optical illusion.

My parents are in their nineties. When I visited them this past Christmas my father was reminiscing about parts of his life. In doing so he paused and said, "The hard thing about being old is all the guys you knew, all the buddies you palled about with are gone."

That is the curse of living long we touched upon in my last post, being alone because our loved ones have gone before us.

I think I can deal with that loneliness if it comes, but I think there is a worse state of being alone.

Our brain is like a tree with roots that feed everything we are and know. What happens if our tree is partly uprooted and only a few tendrils remain and they are damaged. Of all the negative possibilities of aging I fear the uprooting most.

That to me would be the roughest path to hike.

I have a friend who has two friends stumbling onto that dark and narrow trail.  He has taken some steps to try and be a help, which can be difficult when you are only a friend and not family. But we all need look out for each other when we can.

I do not know the worse aspects of this uprooting. Is it worse for the victim or for those around them? It is not easy to see a loved one or friend begin to disappear before our eyes, to see them gradually forget all their humanity. It is certainly not anything I would want to inflict upon my family.

I don't know how the afflicted person feels. What goes on inside the brain as it becomes more and more disconnected from memories and functions? Is the person aware or are they lost alone in some odd fantasy land? When someone in the advance stages begins to scream is it just some disconnect between dead brain nerves or is it that they are aware of not being aware and suffering because they can't reach out anymore? I have no idea, but it is not the way I would want to end.

To lose my mind to age would be the ultimate horror of aloneness.

What about me at the moment? Have I come to any destinations? I can see the river, the creek, now down below my path. I haven't seen the way down to it yet. I do see a sign this trail isn't as lonely as it seems, here on some trees is a sign that many others have come this way and left their mark.

We all try to make contact with the world in one way or another. Here are dozens and dozens of carved names and initials in the tree.

Now my goal is to get down to the shoreline of the creek.



TO BE CONTINUED

Real Nightmares

The Cowboy Kid, smiling at the dangers of the trail, ready for that bronco of a bicycle to buck him off into the marsh, ready to stand firm in the middle of stampeding railroad trains. He stood up to the challenges of the wilderness he existed in. He had faced down a growling, angry dog (well, actually he fled in abject terror, but why besmirch his adventurous image now). He had my trusty companions by his side, Peppy and Topper. He had the daydreams of being a blossoming Frank Buck.

But what of the nightmares.

Like the mist that rose in early morning across the marsh, nightmarish images can appear on the brightest days. They can blight a snowy road with a spray of blood or turn a summer flower into a siren of doom. And the most nightmarish aspect of all is they are real, they can't be changed and they claim squatter's rights in a back room of your mind.

Yes, The Kid lived back behind a swamp in the middle of what was nowhere at that time. It was an insulated world in many ways, but it did have a great connecting link to civilization. They lived

beside the great Lincoln Highway.

The Lincoln Highway, Route 30, also called in these parts, the Lancaster Pike. The Kid's family was tied to the breadth of the country by that road, which began in Times Square, New York City and ended in Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California.

The Lincoln Highway has been probably as dominate a landmark throughout The Kid's life as the Brandywine Creek. It seems to him it'd been

around forever, but it was just twenty-some

years old when he was born. It started out being named the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway and was the brainchild of the man who also gave us the Indianapolis 500 Speedway and Miami

Beach, Florida. Carl Fisher [pictured on left] looked out one day in 1912 and realized with the growth of automobiles there was a need for a

good road. He decided to build one coast to coast with the help of money from the automobile makers. Henry Ford didn't see the point and without Ford's money it seemed a doomed dream, until Henry Joy, head of the Packard Motor Car Company suggested naming it after Abraham Lincoln. This struck a patriotic chord and eventually funds were raised and the highway completed.

And The Kid's first nightmare image appeared on it in the first winter after he moved to the swamp. He rode a school bus to school. It was late afternoon on the trip home. There was snow across the fields, a drifting here and there even across the well-traveled Lincoln Highway. The sun was bright, it glistened on the white of the fields and also off the lanes of the road. The bus slowed, as traffic in both directions had and moved slowly pass the cause that lay on the center lines on the side to which he sat. A dog had been hit, it hindquarters crushed, its blood and other parts smearing the white. It struggled to get up, but couldn't, never would.

The bus passed, moved on. The Kid did not know, will never know, if anyone stopped to tend the dog or to put it out of its misery. There was no carcass the next day, only the stain, so someone took it away somewhere. Beyond that The Kid could not know its fate anymore than he was ever able to erase that scene from his vision or thoughts. Perhaps it was an omen.

Although I have been speaking of his isolation during this period, The Kid wasn't on a desert island somewhere. The house and land belonged to the owners of the hauling company his dad

worked for and their terminal was a quarter mile or so up the highway toward the east. The terminal was across the highway and set back. Opposite its entrance drive on marsh side was a small apartment building.  Most tenants worked for the hauling company. His father and mother socialized with two families who lived there. Joe Bender and his wife remained long time friends of his parents. They had a daughter, Dot, but she was older than The Kid. (She was in a later time and place to become his babysitter and even later, she and her husband became friends of The Kid and his wife. Those are stories for later times.)

The other family was the Humes. They had a son, Tom (he was the model for Thomas in "Ground Dog Day"), but he was even older than Dot. He wasn't particularly interested in being a playmate to a 7 year old. So when The Kid's parents visited with the Benders or the Humes, Dot or Tom spent time amusing him, but beyond that they were as invisible as anyone else in his day-to-day world.

Further up the highway lived eighty or ninety boys, none of whom were his age. It would have mattered little if there were. This was the Church Farm School (now known as CFS: The School at Church Farm). It was a boarding school started in 1918 by the Reverend Dr. Charles W. Shreiner of the Episcopal Church. It took in boys of lower economic circumstances and gave

them a college prep and religious education. The students helped pay the cost of this by working the farm belonging to the school. As far as I know, this is still the case on the 1,600 acres of farm, school buildings and dorms.

But those boys were as insulated and isolated as was The Kid. They lived in their self-contained world and he never saw them. That school could have been a hundred miles away in another state for all it touched upon his life.

Between the Church Farm School and the apartments was a factory, White Motor Company.

Based out of Cleveland, Ohio, the company made a variety of mechanical tools and vehicles. It manufactured sewing machines, roller skates, lathes and bicycles.

As you can see from their logo on the left, they also were once automobile makers.

The company existed from 1900 to 1981 as the White Motor Company. This particular plant between the Church Farm School and the swamp made trucks, perhaps their most famous product.

Running alongside the truck factory just before the Church Farm School was a row of small houses. The first was next to the highway, then they ran back along the driveway of the factory, sitting up on a high ridge. The outer edge of this ridge toward the truck plant was covered in gravel.

The Kid can't recall how he came to meet them, but living in one of those little homes was a family with children his age. Perhaps the events which occurred later that summer have erased some memories from his mind, because he cannot remember the family name or the name of any individual member. There were four children, three boys and a girl. The girl was the youngest. She may have been four years old. All the children were close in age and the oldest was seven or eight. The Kid didn't know them until halfway through June of the year he came.

The reason for this was their father had been killed in the war (World War II). Since those little homes were company houses,  either he worked for White Motors before his death or the mother was working there then. The boys were students at the Milton Hershey Industrial School. Yes, the same Milton Hershey of Chocolate Bar fame. Milton and his wife, Catherine [pictured on the left and she looks as if she ate a lot of Milton's chocolate], established a boarding school in 1909 for orphaned boys. It provided care and education from pre-kindergarten through Twelfth Grade for boys in need (today this includes girls). Besides an education, Hershey provided for their clothes, board, nourishment, health care and career counseling.

When The Kid moved to the swamp over Christmas vacation at the end of 1947, the boys were back in Hershey, Pennsylvania by the time he settled in. But he did meet them somehow in the summer of 1948. Sometimes they would come down to his place and sometimes he would go to their home. He remembers an instance at their place that summer.

He did not know who built it, but there was an underground structure atop that ridge amidst the houses. The boys used to use it as a fort or a hideout in their games. Once as they ran about in a game of war atop the high embankment, The Kid slipped on the loose edge and fell face first down the gravel side to the drive below. He didn't feel hurt, but when he pushed himself up he felt a twinge in one hand. When he looked down that hand was covered in blood. The Kid had a strange reaction to hi wound. He felt embarrassment. He didn't want anyone to see it, so after climbing back up the embankment, he stuck his bleeding hand into a pants pocket and hid in the underground hideaway.

One of the boys found him and took him into their house, but their mother ordered him to take the hand out of his pocket. She then washed it and dabbed it with iodine or mercurochrome. Which ever it was, it stung something fierce. After the cut healed he was left with another inch-long scar, this time running along the creases of his palm. (This was not to be his last battle scar of childhood.)

Summers fly by for children. It came time for the boys to leave again for their other life in Hershey. The boys came down to his place for one more day of play and they brought their little sister along. Late in the day, they left to go home, walking down the long lane, then up the shoulder along the Lincoln Highway to their house a quarter mile away.

The Kid and his mom were outside when they left. The two of them heard the screech and squeal together and his mom began to run down the lane. The Kid followed behind, but before reaching the highway, she stopped him and told him to stay where he was. She then walked up the road where The Kid could see traffic was coming to a stop.

Walking home, the oldest boy had noticed wild flowers growing on the bank across the pike. He wanted to pick a bouquet to give their mother. He had been leading their sister along, now he gave her hand over to one of his brothers and told the boy to hold on to her because she wanted to go pick the flowers, too. The older boy crossed. His sister struggled, but her brother held her tight, until she bit his hand and he let go.

She ran out into the traffic lanes and was struck and killed.

The Kid didn't know what happened to the family after that summer. He didn't see them the next year so assumed they moved away. How sad to lose your husband and then your daughter. How awful to lose your sister that way. (Strangely, this scene was to repeat itself a couple years later.)  How did those boys deal with the guilt they must have felt because the guilt The Kid felt in her death was heavy enough. They were going from his home, from visiting him, when it happened. He wished his last memory of them wasn't the sound of car brakes skidding on a highway. He wishes today he could remember their names.

The portrait of The Kid at the top of this post was a detail from the one here. It is from the same year he first moved to Glenloch (1947), but was taken next to his grandparents house in town during a visit.

There was an itinerant photographer who came through town. He supplied the hat, bandana and pony. This guy must have got around [note this was marked as 479 on the stirrup]. Almost fifty years later, when The Old Goat was working for the bank, this subject came up. So many of them around his age had similar pictures, they decided to have a "Pony Picture" day. All brought in their old photo and there was a display put up. Lots of little kids in the same hat, same kerchief on the same pony were hanging on the wall. That hat must have been plopped on so many heads it's a wonder they all hadn't shared heads full of lice. Maybe the guy cleaned the thing every time.

Affliction: Another influential person in my life -- Stanley Stein

"If the disease breaks out all over his skin and, so far as the priest can see, it covers all the skin of the infected person from head to foot, the priest is to examine him, and if the disease has covered his whole body, he shall pronounce that person clean. Since it has all turned white, he is clean. But whenever raw flesh appears on him, he will be unclean. When the priest sees the raw flesh, he shall pronounce him unclean. The raw flesh is unclean; he has an infectious disease. Should the raw flesh change and turn white, he must go to the priest. The priest is to examine him, and if the sores have turned white, the priest shall pronounce the infected person clean; then he will be clean." Lev 13:12-17

Once I had an inspirational friend who I never met. I only knew him through letters (this was before email). I didn't even know his real name until sometime after he died. He was Sidney Maurice Levyson, but I only knew him as Stanley Stein, as did the world at that time. It was amazing he was known at all. He was considered a leper. Leprosy was greatly misunderstood and probably still is. The real name for the disease is Hansen's Disease and as horrid as the affliction can be, it is not as infectious as once thought. Most of our knowledge of this disease comes from popular presentation of Bible stories where lepers were normally portrayed wrapped in bandages and crawling out of caves.

When Stanley Stein was diagnosed with the disease, he was immediately removed from society and incarcerated (there is no better word for it) in the Carville Hospital in Louisiana. Not only did he lose his home and family, he even lost his name. He choose his pseudonym to be known by more than a number.

But Stanley didn't disappear quietly into the netherworld of pariahs. He began a newspaper called "Star 66", of which I was once a subscriber. He didn't stop there. he also wrote a book about his life entitled, Alone No Longer. As a young man I read that book and wrote to Mr. Stein and we carried on a correspondence for awhile after that.

TO STANLEY STEIN

You have me in a cave as to save from the grave
YOU from my infection,
Because of a pale blemish that’s diminished the finish
Of my complexion.
I don’t know why this land to a man wants to ban
Me, a tainted fixation.

And don’t call me that word anymore, you’ve
Given me swampland barless prison blues.

You won’t allow me a wife or a life in the strife
Of my growing pockery.
And you put me down in the ground away from town
Under guard, lock and key,
Then you turn tail and run and you shun me, and son,
YOU call this democracy?

And don’t call me that word any more, you’ve
Given me swampland barless prison blues.

And your preachers preach the gospel
And they turn the people rather hostile
Then they collect for the hospital.
YOU call that Christianity?

And every gift that you give me
Is sterilized just to rib me
While you say you want to live. Gee!
YOU do that unanimously.

Then YOU wash your hands off
After waving me to please stand off.
After you’ve burned all the land off
YOU leave me anonymously.

While YOU go back home with your own all alone
Whispering where you’ve been,
Then YOU gasp at the rot at this spot and allow how
We aren’t owning much skin.
After which you sit back and get slack with a snack and
Go back asleep again.

And don’t call me that word any more, you’ve
Given me swampland barless prison blues.

There was a reason I was drawn to Stanley Stein. If he and I had lived in Biblical times, we both would have been visiting the priest about skin diseases. We may have both been branded as lepers in those times and shunned by our community, even though my own affliction is not as serious as his. I have the "heartbreak of psoriasis". It covers most of my body. It is not normally dangerous and it is not at all contagious. Basically it is just ugly, although sometimes it itches and sometimes it hurts, like a bad sunburn.
I first was diagnosis when I was 15, although I am certain I had it several years earlier. There were comic circumstances to the discovery. I was sitting on a hammock with a girl (young sister of a friend) and we lost our balance and were dumped to the ground. She landed upon my face and I bounced up in fear my glasses might be shattered and my eyes might get cut. It was a hot late spring day and we were in bathing suits. When I leaped up to feel my glasses, she asked about a rash on my underarm.
I looked and sure enough, there was this red ring around my armpit. We had just been studying "social diseases" in health class at school and I immediately jumped to the conclusion I had a 'social disease". This was how naive and innocent the times were. Why should I have any of the diseases talked about in that class? I was a virgin. I had never had sex of any kind with anyone. And what would it have been to get a "social disease" in my armpit? Nonetheless, I feared the worse and hid this blemish from my parents.
My grandfather spotted a white splotch on my elbow during a visit to his home shortly thereafter and took me to a dermatologist. It was psoriasis. The doctor gave me a cream that was gray and smelled like a telephone pole. I rubbed this on the splotch and the rash and they cleared up. But soon another splotch appeared on another body part. It was a losing battle and the splotches were small and often cleared up on their own.
I didn't even think about it as a young man. Then came the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson was president and the war was not going well. he lifted the deferment on married men and I got the letter to report for a physical. At the last stage one of the doctors asked, "what is that on your shoulder?" I hadn't been aware of anything on my shoulder, but when I stretched my neck to see, there was a tiny white splotch. This was the only blemish upon me at that particular moment, but it kept me out of Vietnam. I was classified as 1-Y. This meant I was fit to serve, except only if they needed to scrap the bottom of the barrel. I guess they never got to the barrel bottom because I was never called up.
The disease continued to be an occasional spot of white or patch of red until I reached my forties, then it spread like wildfire. It covered me, but only beneath my clothing. As long as I kept my shirt on, I appeared normal.
I went to another dermatologist. He took one look at my condition and his eyes lit up. He told me of a new experimental treatment, which he wanted to try and then had me strip naked to take pictures. I could see what he was thinking. If he cured me with this new treatment, he'd be in the medical magazines, maybe even write a book and I'd be in there too, in all my naked glory.
I never went back after that initial visit.
But then in my late forties, it spread to my face. I sought out yet another dermatologist and he gave me light treatments. Three times a week I had to go to his offices. A nurse would take me to a back room, where I would strip naked and step into this big box. There was a little window in the door. Inside the four walls were lined with lights. I would stand -- nude -- upon this little stool in these lights. It started with a couple of minutes, but eventually worked up to a half hour. I invented games to occupy my mind. I would stand facing the door for so many counts, then turn left on my little stool for so many, then face the rear of the cabinet so many more and so on.
This went on until I received the doctor bill and discovered what he charged for those light treatments. (Medical insurance didn't pay for it in those days, they classified psoriasis treatment as cosmetic.) But tanning salons were just gaining popularity, so I went to one and for $10 not only got a light treatment, but could lay in a bed (that looked like a giant waffle iron) and listen to music.
The blotches did all go away, but after a period returned. I ignored it this time. But the scales became thicker and soon I was in pain. It hurt to turn a doorknob. I would make a fist and the skin would break and bleed.
To a new dermatologist I went. I had developed an extreme case, one which was now life threatening because my skin couldn't breathe properly. Fortunately, the insurance companies now did cover treatment. I was back to standing naked it light boxes, but they had advanced as well. They were now a sleek chamber that looked like something out of Star Trek and you did not have to be cooked as long.
The light box was not the only thing I was subjected to. I was given several ointments and lotions I had to apply at different times of day. I was to take three baths a day and then sit for twenty minutes slathered with a cream. This was not easy when you work. Once my condition was controlled, I stopped all of this and have just lived as I am since.
Very few people have even commented to me about it. Those who have usually mistake my situation as poison ivy. In Florida in 1984, though, I was approaching the elevator bank of a hotel where a man was waiting. He saw me and ran down the corridor screaming, "what do you have? What do you have?" I was tempted to pursue and embrace him and say, 'I don't know, but now you have it too." I didn't. I wouldn't be mean that way.
It is interesting to me that society has overstated the danger of Hansen's Disease to the point they use to lock people away and they have reduced psoriasis to a joke. Although there is no comparison to the seriousness of Hansen's with psoriasis, the one should not cause the panic it has and the other can be more serious than a punch line.
Stanley Stein is gone now. He was born the same year as my late grandmother, 1899. I remain afflicted with my patches and splotches. But in all, I adapt and I adopt Stanley Stein's credo:

“People sometimes ask me if I have a philosophy of life. I do. I subscribe to the concept embraced by Evelyn Wells in her meaningful book, ‘Life Starts Today.’ I try and make the best of each day, not grieving over yesterday, and not being too concerned over what may happen tomorrow. To me, ‘eternity is the moment.”
“Instead of bemoaning the things that I have lost, I try to make the most of what I have left. In his essay on Compensation, Emerson says, “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else.”

"To Stanley Stein" was written by Nitewrit in 1968. It was performed on March 13, 2004 at Franco's at 4W5 by the author. The photograph and quote of Stanley Stein was taken from "Searching for Stanley Stein" by Jerry Klinger, Jewish Magazine July 2007. I have provided a link to the article in my link section.