My History and Connection to Downingtown, Pennsylvania

My first homes weren't in Downingtown, but I consider the borough my home town nonetheless. It is where I spend most of my youth and where much of what I would be as a person was formed.  I hold a great fondness for the place.

My family history goes far back to the town and the surrounding environs of Chester County and the memories of living along the Brandywine flow through my veins as much as blood does.

That history goes back further even than the 1870 photograph of Downingtown's then main street. My family is married into the very name. My Grand

Uncles Herford and Ellsworth Downing (Uncle Ellsworth is pictured on the right.) were direct descendants of Thomas Downing, for whom the town was named.

The two Downing brothers, the 4-Great Grandsons of Thomas, married my Grandmothers two older sisters, Helen and Clara. My Grandmother named Easter was the youngest child of William Frederick and Anna Dunlap Wilson. My Grand Aunt Helen and My Grandmother Esther were named for my Great-Great Grandmother, Esther Helen Bicking Wilson.

Esther Helen Bicking's father was Frederick Bicking and he was the Manager

of his father's paper mill in Downingtown.  The last remains of that mill, long after its usefulness and prior to it disappearing from this world is pictured on the left.

Esther Helen Bicking married William Frederick Wilson, who was a farmer and auctioneer. His son and namesake, known as Fred owned a large dairy farm that stretched along Route 100 from around where Ship Road crosses up to Lionville. He called his farm, "Marchwood".  Today his old lands are covered by housing developments and a shopping center.

The lead rider on the right is my Great Grandfather, William Frederick Wilson, Jr., engaging in what was a popular Chester County activity, riding to the hounds on a fox hunt.

As a boy my grandfather took me along on several such hunts through the farmland of Chester County. We usually ended up in a bar somewhere.

One of William, Jr.'s sisters was Emma Bicking Wilson. She married Benjamin Franklin Meredith. This fact freaks my kids out, "Our family tree doesn't branch," they yell. Yep, my mother and dad are cousins. I have a Great Great Grandmother who is also an Aunt and a Great Great Grandfather that is also an Uncle.

The Meredith's go back in Chester County a ways. David Meredith came here in 1683 with a group of Welsh Quakers. They settled in Chester County with a land grant from William Penn on what was called the Welsh Tract. This is why we have places with names like Llanerch, Bryn Mawr, Gladwyne, Bala Cynwyd, Berwyn and Uwchlan. Davis Meredith married a Philadelphia girl named Sarah Rush, who was the Great Great Aunt of Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

David and Sarah settled about twenty-eight miles from Philadelphia, which Sarah described as "Six miles beyond neighbors, except Indians…" Another man who came over with the Welsh at that time was Richard Thomas, he was the namesake of Dick Thomas, who had the Brick Oven restaurant I loved as a boy. The families settled around a Lemi-Lenape village called Katamoonchick, meaning "hazelnut grove". The Lenapes had dogs and this afforded some protection. If strangers came into the area the dogs would bark a warning. Katamoonchick is better known today as Exton. (On the left is an early West Whiteland settler's cabin built in 1707.)

The Thomas Family became leaders in the community and established an estate off of what would

become Route 30. They named their estate, Whitford. The Meredith's eventually established farmland along what is now Route 100/202 and they called their homestead, Whiteland. (On the right is the home build by my 5-Great Grandfather Daniel Meredith in 1815 as it looks today. It sits off of Route 100 on Echo Hollow Road.)

So having established some long buried roots in this area, lets move up to more recent times and my coming to Downingtown. But first lets deal with my own arrival on the scene.

As I said at the beginning, my original home wasn't in D-town.  I was born at the Chester County Hospital in West Chester in the middle of 1941.

My parents at that time lived in Modena, sometimes known as Paperville and originally named Modeville.  This suburb of Coatesville was my father's hometown and a good bit of it was owned by his Grandfather, for whom he had been named, William Wilson Meredith. My father's family lived on Meredith Row (now called Meredith Court) in

one of the row houses owned by his Grandfather. Although his mother and brothers occupied some of these houses at the time, my parents were living in an apartment in this building by the railroad
tracks (pictured left) , also owned by my Great Grandfather.

All these structures still exist pretty much as they were those seventy-plus years ago, as does the family General Store (owned by my Great Grandfather, of course), which sits on the corner of Meredith Row/Court. (Pictured right.)  On the left are my father's family in 1930, when my dad was 12. From left to right are my Grandmother Florence Townsley Meredith with her arm around my father. The blond boy was the youngest of the three boys, Uncle Francis. Next is my Grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Meredith III and finally, Uncle Ben (yes, Benjamin Franklin IV) My Grandfather was the manager of the family store and that is the delivery truck behind the family.

I did not live in Modena long, only a few weeks, and then we moved to Whitford, to the George Thomas III Estate and in with my maternal Grandparents. This is where my mother lived her childhood. The area was known as Whitford Station.

This is me standing in front of the house as it looks today (photo taken 2004).














Whitford Station as it looked in 1908.

My mother in front of the Whitford Home in 1930. She is the girl in the middle. The others are Bill, Bob and Irene Yarnell.

Although this was to be my second home, I didn't live there long either. I do not know the reason, but in December of 1941, when I was six months old, the whole kit and caboodle of us, Grandparents, Parents and I, moved to 424 Washington Avenue in Downingtown, right across the street from the East Ward School.

The house looked pretty much as it does in this photo then, except it had different siding and a wooden rail around the front porch. There was a green glider where that bicycle sits.

The United States had entered World War II at the time we moved here and my father went off to serve aboard the Destroyer Escort USS Jaccard in the South Pacific Theater, taking part in the retaking of Bataan and the Philippines in 1944.

This is my dad with me in 1944 during a leave. The house across the street was where the Buckley's lived. It sat right at the corner of the East Ward playground and I don't think that house is there anymore on Washington Avenue.

My father came home from the Navy in January of 1946, three months before his term was up due to the illness and death of his mother. (His father had died in 1937, when my dad was in his late teens.

On the right I am sitting on the front steps of 424 Washington in 1944.

We remained at 424 Washington for the most of the next two years, but my dad got a job as a trucker at Hines Trucking in Glen Loch. With the job came a house down in a swamp across the highway from the trucking company. Hines owned the property and let us live there rent free because dad was a returning veteran. This meant I moved again. In December, halfway through First grade at east Ward, my parents and I moved.

Glen Loch had once been a large estate and where we now located was at a far corner of it. The main house, called Loch Aerie (pictured right) sat along the Lincoln Highway more toward Frazer. It still is there today,

Our house was not so grand. It sat surrounded by a swamp on two sides, a cow pasture on another and a hill covered with corn behind.

Someone had started to cover the brick with whitewash and never finished, but the scaffolding still stood along one wall.

We lived there in isolation from the world, with no children my age anywhere around. I went to West Whiteland Elementary on the bus and then came home to make up games with my two dogs, Peppy and Topper.

But another December rolled around and my father changed trucking companies, going to drive for Atkinson in Philadelphia. This meant we lost the house and me moved back to 424 Washington Avenue in Downingtown. I was halfway through Third Grade.

I continued in Third Grade at East Ward with Miss Ezrah as my teacher. I am the dark haired boy standing directly in front of her in this class picture, 1950. On the far right of that same row, half hidden by Stuart Meisel, is Ronald Tipton.  Those two would become my best friends and remain so even today, although Stuart is in Florida and Ronald lives in Sussex County Delaware and I live in New Castle County.

Downingtown was small in those days and relatively quiet. (Pictured left, the center of Downingtown in the 1940s. On the right you can see the towers of the Swan Hotel and the side of the Downingtown national bank.) I walked downtown a lot or to the Roosevelt Theater (right) for Saturday matinees or to the library.

We lived with my Grandparents for a couple more years and then my parents were able to rent the

house at 417 Washington Avenue, on the opposite side about the center of the block. We lived directly across from Iva Darlington.

It was a double house. We lived in the side nearest the camera in this photo (right). The lot next door was owned by a farm equipment dealer. It was full of tractors and combines and such equipment. On Sundays when the place was closed I would go play on these vehicles. That is how that dealership looks today, except the farm equipment is gone and the lot is filled with pickup trucks.

I lived at 417 until the spring of 1956. (On right, the 400 Block of Washington Avenue from Chestnut Street.) The Landlord told my parents they would have to move because he wanted the house for his daughter, who was getting married. My parents bought a house near Pottstown, just above the Village of Bucktown and moved there by the end of April. I moved back to 424 Washington and lived with my Grandparents until the school year ended and I finished Ninth grade at Downingtown Jr. High School, then I moved out of town for good, although it will always remain my hometown in mind and heart.

Psychedelic Philadelphia and Me

We moved to Philadelphia in the late sixties. I was unemployed; that is, I wasn't employed by any place that gave me a regular paycheck. Some months before it seemed to me a good idea to quit my job at ARCo and spent my days writing a novel and sending out stories to various magazines and collecting the resulting rejection slips.

My wife procured a position as private secretary to the head of University of Pennsylvania's Chemistry Department making her our main provider. I was picking up some pittance writing term papers, speeches and other essays for college students too lazy to do their own assignments. As a result I was carrying an A average in three schools I never attended, Community College of Philadelphia, LaSalle University and St. Joseph's University. I was just establishing myself as a local writer with "Philadelphia After Dark". None of this together paid enough to support one person much less two.

I dickered around with pen names on the theory of preserving my private life under anonymity. One didn't want to be pestered in public once those prizes, such as the Pulitzer and Nobel, started rolling in. A writer could have the best of both worlds, fame and fortune under some phony byline and peace and quite under his given moniker. If Mark Twain walked into a saloon and said, "Howdy, I'm Sam Clements," they probably bought him a sarsaparilla and told him tales of life they would never have revealed to the famous author. I considered being "Lem Brown", which sort of preserved my family links as well as my initials.

Ghostwriting for others never reveled my name at all, of course. My client's signature goes under the title and they get the credit. No one would ever know my involvement, unless I told, as I am, or they told, which they wouldn't. They couldn't very well saunter up to their professor and say, "By the way, I hired someone to write this for me." They'd find their golden A had quickly become a red F.

I signed the essays written for "The Communicator" as "Loop" and underground publications, such as "Psychedelphia Period", as Eugene Lawrence. It was too little too late. I was on the newsstands in "Philadelphia After Dark" under my full name. When my stories started to sell to a wider market it was under my full name and just about everything there after.


These were days when between writing assignments I would wander from trolley stop to trolley stop looking for dropped change. A quarter would buy a bag of soft pretzels at any street vendor, a bag containing three. Quite often this would be both my breakfast and lunch, a mobile meal I could consume as I walked about the city. I'm afraid this is a habit that has stayed with me; both eating soft pretzels and walking about.

(I titled a collection of essays about Philadelphia Pretzels For Lunch, as a matter of fact.)

Always a walker, it became a nessesity when we lived in Philly. It was the cheap way to get around. My assignments from "Philadelphia After Dark" took me hither and yon about town, from Quince Pye on the tiny alleyway of Quince Street East of Broad (the picture on the right is of that location as it is today) to the Pocket Playhouse at 2601 Lombard.

The actors of the Pocket Playhouse lived together in a commune somewhere on the Hippie Streets between Waverly and South off 26th Street. Those
Hippie streets of deteriorating buildings, second-hand clothing stores, bell, book and candle vendors, head shops along with the Pocket Playhouse and the colorfully painted sidewalks are gone now, covered by brick townhouses and gentrification. The Hippies displaced by the Yuppies and even the Yuppies probably displaced now.  It isn't the same as when I and friends oft visited to buy psychedelic posters and cheap clothes.

South Street retains the reputation of hipness, but those streets then were sweeter and more innocent, often joyful, while South Street today is gaudy, noisy and jostling. (Photo on the right, titled "Buttermilk Toast on South Street" was taken in 1968; photo on left is South Street today.)


We lived in West Philadelphia, the area known as University City, because of the institutes of higher learning located there. There was a dormitory of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy right behind our building. We rented a studio apartment on Chester Avenue just off 42nd Street. The Commodore still exists as an apartment house. What its clientele is today, I do not know, but then it was students, Hippies, druggies, prostitutes and us.

We moved into the "No pets allowed" apartment with a hamster and an Iguana, sneaking their cages in at midnight. Coming in we heard the Super's voice down the hall. We dashed into our digs and shut the door only to discover the hamster had escaped. Not long after we heard a woman scream and thought someone found Hammy. But the little beast showed up three days later, its back greasy from being under the refrigerator.

Women's screams were not unusual. The pair down the hall sometimes broke the night calm with her screaming in the hall, attacked by invisible critters in her drugged state, he trying to ease her back to their room.

There were different screams at night above us. A prostitute lived there and from our bathroom you could hear every sound of her business. We had the most erotic bathroom in Philly. It was common, too, to hear the clickety-clack of a big wheels, ridden up and down the hall at 2:00 AM by the 8-year old son of the other prostitute, who shared the same floor with us.

(Left: Lois at the Commodore, 1969)


"I think we should start a band," said Jim one night well into a second or third pitcher of Screwdrivers.  Ah, but this brings us to who we hung with and where we did the hanging. We will save that for the next time.

"Bible Series" on History: My View

The Bible is large. It is divided into 66 book, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. It was composed by many authors, all writing under the influence and guiding present of the Holy Spirit, which is to say God (Father, Son and Holy Ghost). It contains many stories, histories, poems and personalities.

Needless to say it is a complex and layered volume. It is filled with thrilling tales that make for great drama. These contain the gamet of human emotion and struggle as well as battles and adventures of epic proportion. Many of these have had great allure for film makers since the birth of movies. Films based on the Bible go back to at least "Passion Play" (a series of shorts that equaled about an hour in length) in 1903 and Vie et Passion du Christ in 1905. Most have presented a singular episode such as "Adam and Eve" (1912), "Noah's Ark" (1929), "The Ten Commandments" (1956) and "The Nativity Story"(2009). Few commercial filmmakers have dared tackle the Bible as a whole.

In the mid-1960s John Huston announced he was filming "The Bible" in its entirety. In 1966, "The Bible" was released, but with the subtitle, "In the Beginning..." It included several parts of Genesis, such as Noah (played by John Huston himself). The others were Cain and Able, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah and the life of Abraham. I remember the hype for this film and most of the attention in the media focused on the Creation sequence, most notably that the actors portraying Adam and Eve would be performing in the nude.

This probably boosted ticket sales. However, as spectacular as many of the scenes were and as perfect as were Adam and Eve's bodies, "The Bible" never got further than "In the Beginning". None of the promised sequels were ever made.

On Sunday evening, March 3, 2013 the History Channel showed the first in it's series, "The Bible". Produced by Rona Downey ("Touched By an Angel") and her husband Mark Burnett ("Survivor") it promises to cover Genesis through Revelation in five two-hour long shows. Television might be the best outlet to present the dramatization of the Bible, but I don't think 10 hours is enough time to do it. My main criticism of this endeavor is the feeling of being rushed.

A brief synopsis of the first episode would probably be helpful.

It began with the Arc being tossed upon raging waters. Inside the boat Noah is reciting the creation story to his family. He tells this from when God said, "Let there be light", touching on the creation of man, Cain killing Abel up to God's decision to drown the whole world because of man's evilness. These scenes flash by as he talks with little explanation. For instance, we see Cain strike down Abel, but receive no explanation of why Cain did this or what happens to Cain afterward. We basically jump from that first murder to pictures of people drowning in the flood.

This portion begins with the arc in the middle of the water and quickly ends there. There is no sending out of birds, no olive branch, no landing on dry land. We are literally left adrift at sea. Perhaps the most effective part of this sequence is giving us a picture of just how enormous the arc was.

We go quickly from the Flood to Abraham. We have parts of Abraham's life, including the destruction of Sodom, up to the moment when he is stopped by God in mid-knife of sacrificing his son. At this point we are transported to Egypt and Moses. The stories of Jacob and Joseph are simply ignored. We see young Moses (pictured right) being egged into a sword fight with Pharaoh's son (a passage I missed somehow in Exodus). Pharaoh breaks this up and then tells his daughter she better tell Moses he really isn't her son. Moses goes out, wanders about, kills an Egyptian overseer and flees while Joshua hides the body (another passage I missed, I guess - the part about Joshua hiding the body that is).

And suddenly it is 40 years later and there is a burning bush speaking to a much older Moses (pictured left with Aaron).  Now Moses is much quicker to agree to the idea he must save his people than he is in my Bible. In my Bible he argues with God that he isn't up to the task, especially since he can't speak well. In my Bible, God tells him his brother Aaron will do the speaking for him, but in this film Moses accepts the challenge pretty quickly and he doesn't meet his brother until he returns to Egypt, and Aaron doesn't speak for him at all. Moses also walks about with this odd smile on his face most of the time.

We get a flip-book sequence of plagues -- frogs hopping about, locust swarming, burning hailstones, etc, and after each a picture of Pharaoh yelling, "No!" The Passover is passed over rather quickly and then Moses is parting the Red Sea. Once across the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's dead army floating upon the water, we are told that Moses led his people to Mt. Sinai and there received these stone tables from God. Moses shows the tablets to Joshua, declares they now have The Law and tells Joshua to lead the Hebrews to the Promise Land. There is no coming off the mountain to an orgy and golden calf, no wandering about the desert for forty years, not even a representation of Moses' death, let alone any explanation of why Moses couldn't lead his people into Canaan himself.

We simply leap to Joshua and his followers standing and looking at a walled city. "We must take Jericho," Joshua says and then sends two spies to the city.

We go inside the walled city and this man stops a woman on the street. He calls her Rahab and his "little whore". It comes across as a bully of a man harassing a young woman. Other than his calling her a whore nothing establishes that she just may be one. She goes on her way and the man laughs.

Right after this we see the two spies scale the wall, drop to the other side to immediately be confronted by about a dozen Jerichoians, who they rather easily dispatch, although a couple flee crying, "The enemy is within the walls." The two spies run about and meet Rehab, who directs them to an escape route. One spy pulls this rope from about his waist and tells her to hang it on her window and she will be safe with their army attacks.

And at this point we are told continued next week.

I am out of breath telling it here, which to me is the biggest problem with the series. It is rushing to get everything in on schedule, but not fleshing out the sequences with what they really mean. I wish they had decided to continue beyond five weeks and ten hours and develop the characters and plot more fully.

However, the initial presentation had the highest ratings of the night, even in the coveted 18-34 age group. It not only out rated everything on the networks, but was the highest rated show on cable this year so far. We will see if these ratings hold up through the next episodes. My hope is they do and it makes people curious enough to read the Bible for the full story or drives them to approach people of faith for more explanation.

There is some license taken, but perhaps not of such import to quibble. For instance, we all ready mentioned that Moses was much quicker to accept God's request than was so in Scripture. Another example was when Abraham was stopped from sacrificing Isaac. Scripture tells us God supplied a sacrifice, a ram that had its horns caught in a bush. In this film it was a lamb with its hind leg caught. I also don't know if the Angels sent to Sodom wore shining armor and were expert in martial arts style sword fighting.


I would mention that Rona Downing is playing the Virgin Mary. I don't know why there wasn't a younger actress hired to play this part at the birth of Christ. Rona Downing is 52 years old. She might pass for Mary at the Crucifixion when she would have been a woman in her mid-to-late forties (pictured right), but she does not look as convincing as the teenage girl who God chose to be the mother of Jesus (pictured left).

We saw they used a younger actor to portray the young Moses, so why not a younger actress to portray the girl Mary?

Nonetheless, I look forward to Part Two and I hope I have not been too picky in my comments about Part One. We need more shows that would portray the Bible stories in a truthful way. Still, we also need explanations of why these things were included in Scripture. Can we easily see how these pointed to the future Christ in this film?

It is also funny to me that Rona Downing and Mark Burnett have written a novelization of the series. Hopefully in this the meanings are explained, but at the same time I wonder why do we need a novelization when we already have the Bible and have it abundantly in many fine translations?

Between the Black and the Red

Several months back I decided to visit a "Home". My wife and I are in good health and shape, but time goes faster when you reach your seventies and eighty isn't so far down the road. At this age a decade can bring a lot of changes.

I knew we couldn't stay here in our present home for several reason. One biggie is financial. It was a monthly struggle to meet our costs and still have some quality to our life, and a year ago I had a part time job. I didn't see how we could afford to keep this place up in the future. Not only to pay for repairs and maintenance, but even to do the regular chores one does. I don't try to kid myself into thinking age is only a matter of mind. It is a matter of body as well and I don't have the strength, stamina or energy I had even five years ago. A little of these things slip away with every birthday that passes and another birthday is coming this month. Although I walk in the forest every morning, up and down rocky trails and such, I am having more and more trouble with stairs and steps, especially if carrying something such as laundry. Besides, our house is too big for us anymore. It was great for raising three kids, a bedroom for everyone and plenty of room to play indoors on a rainy day.

And so I took a tour. I went to a place that had some small cottages as well as apartments. My wife preferred the sense of having one's own place.

The tour was lovely. There was a group of us trailing behind a charming guide. We traipsed long halls decorated with beautifully framed paintings and vases of flowers. We visited a couple in their lovely two-bedroom apartment with its modern kitchen. We saw the expansive rehab room, the chapel, the small cafe and the gift shop. We finished up with a delicious meal in the large, elegant dining room beneath its chandeliers. Some of the residents joined us at the tables to brag about life in this place. As desert was being served, the chef and the servers came out to take a bow for the marvelous luncheon.

What a wonderful atmosphere to live out your final years, except if I could afford to live there I wouldn't need it. At that time the entry fee to just get in the door started at $120,000 and then $2,600 a month and that was just for a small 500 square-foot Studio Apartment. The prices went up with every foot of floor space you added and don't even think about those little cottages. Twenty-Six thousand dollars a month? Our Social Security checks added together don't even reach that before Medicare is taken out. By the time we jumped to a two-bedroom apartment, which is the least we would prefer, the monthly fee would have eaten up my pension as well. The two-bedroom apartment is just over 1,000 square feet, but you do get two baths.

Wait, that's not all! Buy now and we throw in one meal a day, you may choose breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Now granted, you don't have to worry about some catastrophic illness laying you low. You end up needing constant care you are covered.

I'm not knocking the place exactly. I still think if you are wealthy enough to afford living there you are wealthy enough not to have to live there. I am a bit annoyed the place was founded and is owned by a Protestant Denomination. When Jesus charged his followers to take care of the widowed, orphaned and aged, I don't think this kind of opulence is what he had in mind.

I was disappointed so many of the more upscale of these places have church affiliations. You know, the rich will find a way. I think Christian organizations should be more concerned with the less-than-rich.

Believe me, my parents are not headed for Chef-prepared meals or 1,000 square foot apartments. Of course where they are headed is several steps up from what they may have faced a hundred or so years ago.

They didn't have Nursing Homes for people like us way back then. You grew old and had no money and your family couldn't take you in it was off to the Poorhouse or Workhouse. Do you not recall Ebenezer Scrooge.


"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?"  demanded Scrooge.  "Are they still in operation?"
"They are.  Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?"  said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."

It was from such places the Nursing Homes came about, you know, and through the endeavors of the churches. People of age were sent to the Poorhouse along with the riffraff, petty criminals and debtors.

The churches took umbrage at this deplorable situation and thus was born the Almshouse. Alms is an old word meaning to give necessities to the poor. The various churches began establishing these Almshouse to bring the aged poor out of those public government run Poorhouses.

Very commendable, but not as altruistic or charitable as it sounds. In my opinion the motive was less Christian than pride. The congregations and their leaders of the day thought it deplorable that a Christian should have to rub elbows with guttersnipes, pickpockets and the unsaved (you know, the kind of people Christ rubbed elbows with everyday). Not only did you have to be a Christian of good standing to go to the Almshouse, you had to be a member of its founding denomination.

We have come a long way, baby, from those early beginnings to the modern day Nursing Home. Yet there is still an obvious class distinction of what you will be living in until called up yonder.

When I entered the world of the Nursing Home searching for a place for mom and dad I discovered this reality and the fact when it comes to the offspring of the Almshouse -- we  still have a long way to go.

What Grandmother Said

My grandmother (pictured to the left in 1967 with my dog Cynthia) always use to say, "This family can't do anything once if they can do it twice." What she meant was nothing ever worked the first time and we always had to do it over again.

When I left This City Hospital to go visit Mushmouth Manor they were wheeling my mom out to have a feeding tube implanted in her belly.

When I called my dad Thursday morning to ask how the operation went, he said, "They didn't put the tube in."

"What?" I actually though he was confused about the days. "When I left her yesterday they were wheeling her to the operating room."

"She didn't get the tube," was all he could tell me.

"I'll be up tomorrow," I told him and left it at that.

Not long after I got a call from the Admissions Director of Garden Green at Deep Pond. Ms Bubbly must have contacted them about taking my mother. She was calling to explain why they couldn't. They were a small facility, she said. They only had 20-some beds and she didn't have the staffing to deal with my mother's needs.

Okay, so Garden Green at Deep Pond was out and I had never even got to see the place.

I went up that Friday afternoon, having had to tend to some other business that morning, and took my dad to the hospital. When we ambled into room 261 my mom was hooked up to more tubes. (We didn't actually amble in, of course. Dad rolled in upon a wheelchair and I plodded behind pushing it.) There was a new addition to the IVs and monitors, the feeding bottle.

She did indeed now have a feeding tube, but it hadn't been easy. My grandmother had been close to right. We didn't do it once. We didn't do it twice either, but three times. It didn't get done on Wednesday after all. They had some difficulty doing it. They rolled her down again on Thursday and again failed to complete the mission. Finally, on the third try they got the tube inserted.

Now she was getting nourishment equivalent to eating regular meals every day, just without the pleasure of chewing and swallowing and tasting and enjoying. Her meals came in a rectangle bottle hanging above her head on the IV stand. It was a brown unappetizing liquid.

We were no sooner in the room when a young woman came in and informed us they were going to get my mother ready to be moved to Sunset City. Whoa, Nelly, they plugged that tube in and were wasting no time getting rid of her.

I looked around. Where was Ms Bubbly? Didn't she say she'd be right by my side the whole way? Where were the hugs today?

Shortly after two paramedics appeared with a gurney. The lead medic did all the talking. He was very cordial, introduced himself and his partner, asked what else we wanted shipped off with mom and assured us they would be gentle.

One of each got on either side of the bed, grabbed the sheet beneath my mother and on the count of three whisked her through the air onto the gurney and were off. I handed dad a couple potted plants my mom wanted and wheeled him out and down to my car.

We drove around the block to where Sunset City was located not far from the hospital. The ambulance was already emptied. It was nearly 5:00 now. I got dad his walker and took him inside and grabbed a convenient wheelchair left along a wall. There was no one to greet us. There was a counter for a receptionist, but no receptionist behind it. There was certainly no Ms Bubbly. I did not know where they took my mother.

Presently two young aids came out through double doors to a corridor where patients resided on the first floor. I waylaid them and inquired about my mom. They knew nothing and were in fact leaving for the day, but one graciously went to find us help. After a bit of a wait, another woman well decorated with tattoos appeared. She told us my mom was in Room 313.

Was any of this a good omen. The day was April 13, Friday the Thirteenth, and she was in Room 313.

I took dad up in the lone elevator and down the long hall on the Third Floor and into her room. There were three beds in the room and mom was in the middle. No one was in the others at the moment. There was an oxygen pump by the head of her bed, sending the pure gas up a tube that fit into both nostrils. It was very loud, as if not all bolted down tight.

I left dad and went back down to move my car from in front of the entrance to the parking lot. The lobby was again empty. I pressed the bar on the front door and nothing happened. The door did not open. I tried its twin to the left. Same result, the front doors were locked. How do I get out?

Just then a delivery guy pulled up behind my car and he came to the door with a package. He reached over on the wall and pressed a code in a keypad fastened here. There was a click and he pulled the door open. I breezed out.

I parked my car, wondering how I would get back in. I saw the ambulance parked nearby, the one that brought my mom. The two paramedics were standing nearby. I walked over. As I approached the one, the talker, hid a cigarette behind his back.

"You didn't see that," he said.

"I couldn't care less," I told him and asked how I got back into the building. He told me there was a button near the door. Press it and someone should come and let me in.

I walked back up the long path to the door. I found the button and pressed it. Nothing happened. I stood and waited and waited and waited. No one came. I saw a little card attached to the glass on the door. It said if no one answered the button, to call a number, which was given.

I traipsed back to my car, retrieved my cell phone from the glove compartment and returned up the long path to the door. I dialed the number and waited. I though this was another dead end, but then someone did finally answer and that someone did finally come and let me in.

I headed to the elevator and I wondered, "How will we get out of here later?"

The convoluted world of Nursing Homes was just beginning.

And where the heck was Ms Bubbly?

You Can Bank on Waiting

Once upon a time there was a strong and fiercely independent Family who dwelt in the land of the great Baron duPont in the village of Bankingshire. There were several proud families very like them striving there, but one by one they disappeared into the clutches of great and powerful Lords of Grab and Grasp from outside the realm. All these once noble names of Bankingshire disappeared, their legacies but memories. Except for this one family and somehow they resisted and fought and retained their name and history.

But like many a family empires preceding and surely many to come, discontentment with what they had seeped in and they began to overreach, growing careless and casual in their dealings. As a result, weakness was found within their house and soon they too fell to outsiders from a distant land.

And because of this I found myself having another change forced upon me late in life. My bank, The Bank, where I had served for many years, until they unceremoniously cast me overboard a decade ago, had fallen under a shadow that wouldn't pass. Instead it only grew darker, until they had no choice but to abandon ship. I now faced a transition of not only my financial services, but my pension as well. Do not think I did not worry.

Especially when between an earthquake and a hurricane, I lost my job. But what could I do about it except wait things out. (I'm sorry. I just looked at my photograph and two images came to mind and I don't want to mention either. Use your imagination.)

As fickle fate would have it, the Great Conversion fell on the dates Ms Irene choose to make an impression upon our little state. Just on the eve of when the new rulers of my money were about to rip off the bags over their new signs, Irene ripped down our electric wires and our cable services. Now just as I must call and activate my new access cards, because on that Friday my old had become deactivated, I had no phones. Now when I had to switch my on-line banking service, I had no internet and with no internet and no new on-line banking service, I could not see if my accounts safely made the transition and more importantly, would my pension deposit be deposited.

I've been through many conversions in my life. I have seen few (make that none) without a glitch, hiccup, speed bump or worse. It did not help that over the many months of anticipation as this conversion slowly, but inexorably moved toward completion, my peace of mind when The President said he could not guarantee Social Security Checks would be sent and my job seemed shaky. Amidst these my mind wondered would my pension get lost in translation?

Of course, the politicians made moot the Social Security question in their usual cowardly way. They simply kicked that can of worms down the street for some future gutless politicians to contend with. My shaky job soon collapsed over an abyss and fell from sight on the eve of both the great bank conversion and the hurricane. This left only the banking questions to be resolved.

After the winds blew by and the creeks rose and the power returned and the cable connected I opened a new on-line account at my new bank. Not too difficult to create, but not much to look at once I opened it. I have three accounts and all were supposed to make the trip. I see one, I see two, I see...I see...

I see one and I see two is what I see. Where is three? I look around the screen. I scroll up and down. I click on a few links, maybe it is hidden behind one of these. I do not find account number three. This is not a good thing. This is not a comfort. If they lost a whole account, one in which I OWE them money, what will they do with my pension where THEY owe me money?

I will have to wait a few more days to know the latter answer, but for now my concern is my missing number three. I see a link that says "Add an Account". Perhaps I have to add this one. After all, this one was a credit card and they not only converted banks, they switched credit card companies on me. Maybe that is why this one requires more from me here.

I click the "Add an Account" and begin filling out a form asking for account name and number and vital statistics, but I pause. At the end it has a fill-in blank labeled, "Pay this Amount". Hmmm! This isn't adding an account, this is adding a payee for Bill Pay. I don't want to pay any amount right now. In fact, if my pension deposit doesn't show up a few days hence, I won't be able to pay any amount to account number three, even if I do find it. If I don't see my pension deposit in a few days hence, maybe it'd be better if account number three stay lost. I cancel the form and return to my somewhat skimpy home page.

Then I notice near the bottom, "To add an account call 1-800-And-Wait." (That's not the real number. Don't call that number. There is no number 1-800-And-Wait. It is not a number, it is what you are going to do when you reach the real number.)

It lists the times of day you may call. I have to wait for the proper hour and when the clock strikes the time, I dial. A mechanical female voice answers with a greeting, a welcome, followed by, "All our circuits are tied up at the moment. Please call back later." Hoo ha!

High tide in the anxiety pool.

There's that word again, wait. I must wait until later and later I call again, around four in the afternoon.

Our cheery little mechanical greeter is there with another welcome and instructions: If you want this thing, press 1; if that thing, press 2; if another thing, press three and so on and so forth until, "If you haven't pressed anything because you are so overwhelmed by our 87 choices, then press 88 and we will start all over again. Just for your convenience. This time pay attention and press something."

I didn't know what to press, nothing quite fit my situation. There was no press zero for a real, live, possibly-even-breathing individual. So I did the next best thing, I picked a number at random and pressed. Our cheery greeter was back, but with a difference message. "We are experiencing a higher than usual call volume. Please stay on the line and our first available representative will be with you shortly." Meanwhile I get to enjoy the most sleep-inducing music I have ever heard on hold. I mean, I didn't want to be subjected to be-bop or hip-hop or rap or reggae or some kind of death metal play, but I wasn't ready for lullaby-time either.

Fortunately my dozing was interrupted at frequent intervals, about every other minute, by our digital hostess announcing the lines were still tied in knots, but "our first available representative will be with you shortly." Of course, "shortly" is a relative thing and it obviously was no relative of the bank's. After numerous "short-lies", a man answered.

He introduced himself. "Hi, my name is Peggy." And I introduced myself, "Hi, my name is confused." We were going to get along great. I begin to explain my missing number three account when I hear a click and nothing.

"Hello, is anyone out there?" followed by "did this guy HANG UP ON ME!" followed by my wife walking in the room announcing, "The cable is out."

Oh yes indeed, the cable was once again kerput. Along with my lost number three account was lost TV, lost internet and lost phones. I didn't lose everything. I still retained my sense of futility and frustration.

Our cable service didn't return until later that evening, too late now to call back. In the morning I decided to go to the nearest branch, track down my AWOL account face to face, Mano y Mano or Womano y Womano. Why does optimism ever ring in my heart? I drive to the bank, park my car and amble across the lot then do a U-turn back to car, to road, to home, to phone. Why did I not know the bank branch would be full. It just converted and I was probably not the only owner of a stray account or transaction about town.

I call the 800 number and our computer-generated Matron'd answers. Apparently they are firing on all circuits this morning, so she goes right into the laundry list of press-worthy buttons. They have still not added my particular problem to the menu and I still do not know an appropriate one to select. I choose to select a different one than I did the day before.

"We are experiencing a higher than usual call volume. Please stay on the line and our first available representative will be with you shortly."

I am back with the sleepy-time music and the constant notifications to stay tuned for the next available representative. And eventually the next available representative answers.

"Hi, my name is Peggy."

Wait a minute, this is the same available representative I got yesterday after pushing a different button. No wonder all their circuits are tied up, what do they have -- ONE! I mean, I was kidding about his name being Peggy, but now I'm not so sure, maybe this is Peggy. Or maybe I have entered the Twilight Zone or worse, this is Groundhog Day repeating itself over and over.

I don't want to disparage the man or imply he was anything like "Peggy". He was very nice and turned out to be quiet helpful, but in the beginning as confused about my missing account number three as I was. He also was having some computer glitches of his own. He asked me for some info on my on-line banking screen and I fumbled about seeking it, explaining that I was using a new computer and going through a learning curve.

"I'm going through a learning curve myself," he said. "I'm actually a former Wilmington Trust employee learning this new system."

He then asked if I minded going on hold while he asked his supervisor some questions. Ah, sweet dreamland.

After a couple snores my nap was cut short by the guy. "I'd like to ask you to do something," he says.

"Okay."

"Sign out of your on-line banking."

I did so.

"Now log back in again."

"Okay."

 "You should see your credit card account now."

Yes, I see it, I see it, it has come home. I thanked him for solving my problem and now all I needed to wait on was whether my pension check would show up in a couple of days.

A couple of days later I went back to my on-line banking account full of fear and trepidation. The accounts popped up, all three, and yes, my pension deposit was there. I was so happy, so relieved, that I even made a payment to the credit card.