Another Day in Paradise

   The knock Tuesday morning wasn’t much of a knock. I wasn’t even sure it was a knock and considered ignoring it. If I answered the door and no one was there, people would think I’m nuts. Then again, if I ignored the knock and someone was there, people would think I’m a snob. Since my sanity is already in doubt, why give people a snooty nit to pick? I answered the door.

   It was Nona, one of Covenant Woods’ marketing people. My first thought was she wanted to know why I hadn’t gone to the reception for new residents on Monday. An invitation to act as a greeter at the reception had been slipped under my door Saturday. If she asked, I’d have to decide whether to tell her the truth – that I had forgotten about it – or tell a harmless fib and deny having received the invitation.

   But my absence wasn’t mentioned, chances are it wasn’t noticed. Nona said she wanted to take a picture of my apartment. Well, maybe my absence was noticed, and this was her way of checking up on me, of making sure I hadn’t become a demented hermit, holed up in my room drinking booze, watching porn and talking to my pet spider.

   “We’re going to put together a brochure,” she said. “I like the studio apartments because you can get an idea of the whole layout with one picture.”

   “Oh,” I said, doubtfully.

   “We’re going to have a professional photographer come in when we’re ready,” she said. “I just need to get some stuff together. If we decide to use your apartment, we’ll have housekeeping straighten things up in here first.”

   “Oh.”

   “I like your apartment,” Nona said. “It looks roomy. You don’t have much furniture. You don’t need a lot of furniture, do you?”

   Wondering if Covenant Woods was hoping to attract less-finicky, less-pretentious residents, I moved to one side while Nona snapped a picture. Then she left, and I went back to my desk-slash-kitchen table, determined to channel a river of creativity through my fingers and into the computer. Instead, I wandered aimlessly around the Internet until sitting on my butt became a pain in the butt, and I took to my bed, taking a volume of Billy Collins’ poems with me.

   The first poem in the book, “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, assault weapons or a well-regulated militia, and everything to do with the dog next door.

      The neighbor’s dog will not stop barking.

      I close all the windows in the house

      and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast

      but I can still hear him muffled under the music,

      barking, barking, barking…

  

   A dog lives in the apartment to the left of me, another lives in the apartment to the right of me and there are a few others living in nearby apartments. They are all well behaved and seldom bark. The same cannot be said, however, for William, a former Marine who lives on the third floor but spends a great deal of time next door visiting Richie. William has a seizure disorder. A couple people have told me he has epilepsy, others say it’s the result of lead poisoning. No matter, even as I try to concentrate on the words of Billy Collins, I can still hear William’s muffled voice, yelling, yelling, yelling.

      When the record finally ends he is still barking,

      sitting there in the oboe section still barking,

      his eyes fixed on the conductor who is

      entreating him with his baton…

     

   William goes on, never witty, frequently obnoxious, often profane and always loud. I suppose I should have a little sympathy for William and his problems, but compassion is hard to come by, especially when I see him each morning coming back from Piggly-Wiggly lugging a twenty-four pack of Coors.

  

   Johnny, the maintenance director, was in the hall when I went to check my mail. He asked if I was going to the Mystery Dinner that evening. The mystery of the Mystery Dinner is where it is to be held.

   “I’m going,” I said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

   “No. But you’ll enjoy it.”

   “How do you know that?” I asked.

   Johnny smiled the smile of a man who had been caught in a lie. In court, the DA would have asked the judge to direct him to answer the question. All I could do was wait until Johnny muttered:

   “Uh, mystery food is always good.”

   Johnny might have been dissembling about knowing where we were going, but he was on the mark about the food at Smokey Bones. I enjoyed my dinner while sharing a booth with Ralph and Isabel, two of Covenant Woods’ most delightful people.

   One of the lessons I learned during my first summer in Columbus is that public places here aren’t so much air conditioned as refrigerated. Once I finished shoveling the chicken asiago down my gullet, I realized I’d forgotten that lesson. The waiter asked if we’d like dessert.

   “Just some coffee for me,” I said.

   “Regular or decaf?”

   “Regular.”

   “Cream or sugar?”

   “No thank you.”

   “Just black? We can do that,” he said.

   Perhaps he could, but he didn’t. He did, however, bring the check, which I quickly paid before heading outside to bask in the warmth. The woman who shows diners to their seats saw me and offered to help me with the door. She asked me about the rest of the group, and did I know where to meet up with them, and did I know where to wait for the bus.

   “I’m just going to sit out here and warm up,” I told her.

   “Is it cold in there?” a man, headed inside with his family, asked.

   “No,” the woman from the restaurant said. “It’s really nice inside.”

   I couldn’t see her face as she held the door for the family, but I imagined her eyes rolling in a manner that said, “He’s just a geezer who isn’t comfortable unless it’s eighty-five and thinks he’s going to drive home in that wheelchair.”

   A few minutes later, Dennis came out and fetched the bus. After an uneventful ride home, I crawled into bed with my Nook at nine o’clock. My intention was to read myself asleep, and I did. My bladder roused me shortly before midnight. The light was still on, the Nook was snuggled between my left arm and my chest, but my glasses were nowhere to be found. They weren’t on my face, they weren’t on the nightstand, they weren’t on what I could see of the floor, and they weren’t on what I could see of the bed.

   My search was cut short by my increasing need to go. And a few more gray hairs sprouted as I maneuvered to get out of bed, worried with every movement I’d find the specs by breaking them. But I managed to get out of bed, into the wheelchair, into the bathroom and to do what had to be done without incident. Then I went back to look for my glasses. They were resting comfortably under the heap of blankets and sheets I’d created when I started moving around. I picked them up, put them on and satisfied that they still worked, I put them on the nightstand. And as Tuesday yielded to Wednesday, I got back into bed.

  

Notes from the Home - April 15, 2013

   Marvin isn’t an actor; he has never appeared in a movie. Yet his is a familiar face. His dark eyes are alert and curious. His eye brows are two brown wooly bears. His forehead is spanned by deeply etched lines, and lines surround his mouth, nose and eyes. His white hair is trimmed regularly, but otherwise neglected. And his cheeks and chin often sport a three-day growth. It is the familiar face of the old prospector leading his mule along the edge of the stream in a western. It is the face of the homeless but wise man on a steam grate in a Christmas movie. It is the face of the sage geezer in a romantic comedy.

   Marvin, however, was a salesman, and his eyes once sized up potential customers. To help break the ice with the buyers, Marvin collected jokes, hundreds of them, most of corny, all of them harmless and not at all offensive.

   “Vitamins are about the biggest thing going these days,” Marvin says. “They’re so popular. I don’t understand it, but everybody wants to be one.

   “Get it? ... B1?”

   I felt as if Marvin’s eyes were sizing me up last week. Wednesday evening, he knocked on my door. I yelled, “Come in,” and Marvin did. He seemed worried that I wasn’t feeling well and he kept asking how I was doing and did I have much pain. And he looked around the room again and again, his eyes darting from one corner to the next.

   “Your apartment is set up like mine,” he said. “Is that the closet over there? Mind if I take a look?”

   I didn’t mind, and he took a look. Then he looked in the bathroom and said his bathtub is a little different. My tub has a cutout, so I can get into it and onto my shower chair. Marvin said his tub is one he can get into and lay back and soak. Then he left, but he was back the next afternoon. It was a short visit. He asked if I knew what we were having for dinner that evening. I didn’t.  But his eyes never stopped darting from the sink, to the table, to the chest of drawers, to the bed, to the table.

   Marvin didn’t have anything to sell me. But if he ever gets a chance to peddle goods again, he now has an idea of what I might want and what I might need.

  

   My birthday came and I reached three score and five without incident. The best part of getting a year older was the chance to spend time with Russ and Karen, who took me out for dinner Friday, and spending time with Jim and Susan, who came east from Birmingham and took me to lunch on Saturday.

   The next best thing was the opportunity to talk to so many old friends from Ash/Craft. Nancy was the enabler, calling and letting all those who wished to speak to me. Thanks to Nancy, I talk to several of the consumers (we used to call the clients) on a weekly basis. But I hadn’t spoken with my former colleagues since coming south a year ago. It was good to hear all those voices again. It made me yearn for work. Really, it did.

   The next best thing was roaming the halls of Covenant Woods and having someone come up to me and ask, “Tom, is it your birthday?”

   “Yep.”

   “How old are you?”

   “Sixty-five.”

   “You don’t look that old.”

   This happened several times. I suppose it is to be expected. No one asks you your age on your birthday and says, “Oh, gawd, is that all? You look so old,” when you tell them.  Still, having six or seven people tell me I look younger than I am made me feel a little younger than I am. 

  

   I will soon be a grandfather again. The doctor removed the stitches from Bethany’s cervix Friday. Word is, Beth dilated to a two as soon as the stitches came out, and she and Ken stayed in Lewiston that night, just to be close to the hospital. But apparently nothing has happened yet. The waiting may explain why I’m up and writing at one-thirty Monday morning.

  

   Otherwise, it was an uneventful week at Covenant Woods. I did get my taxes done, but there’s nothing exciting to report there.

The Legend

  A few days ago I wore a T-shirt from the 2002 Lake Erie Cross Country Invitational and Kiwanis Cross Country Club Challenge. Those races were held on the course laid out by Bob Dulak, who had been the cross country coach at Kent State-Ashtabula, and the members of his one of his teams from a couple decades earlier. The course, which was written up in a national running magazine, eventually became known as the Legend, and the "The Legend" is written large across the front of T-shirt. A woman stopped me in the hall that day and asked, "Are you the Legend?" The answer to that question is an unequivocal no. But the question, "Are you the Legend?" brought back memories of another Legend.

   This is a column I wrote about that other Legend for the Star Beacon. It appeared in the paper on December 28, 2008.

 Most of the time, newspaper articles are no place for inside jokes. Occasionally, however, they worm their way in, and the next thing you know, it’s no longer an inside joke. That’s what happened with an incident involving Jefferson girls basketball coach Rod Holmes and his counterpart at SS. John and Paul, Nick Iarocci.

   Around the office, we refer to Holmes as “Hot Rod.” When speaking of Iarocci, we often call him “St. Nick,” but among his wider circle of friends and colleagues, Iarocci is known as Rock. If Iarocci is Rock, then Holmes must be Boulder. He is, after all, a more imposing sight. If the two starred in a Christmas movie, Holmes would play Santa, and Iarocci would be the mischievous elf.

But that has nothing to do with the joke.

   It might be going too far to call Holmes laconic, but the man doesn’t squander words. Ask him a question, and he’ll answer it. He does have a sharp wit. Once, bemoaning his team’s lack of height, he said, “We wouldn’t have anyone over six feet, even if one of my assistant coaches stood on the other’s shoulders.” He just threw the remark out there, and it was up to you to figure out Holmes was talking about Jon “Little Red Man” Hall and Don McCormack.

   On the other hand, it is accurate to talk about the garrulous Iarocci or the voluble Iarocci. Ask Iarocci a question, and he’ll answer it along with several as yet unasked queries. And when Iarocci wants you to laugh, his face tells you it’s time to laugh. But that has nothing to do with the joke.

   When the Falcons are playing, Holmes sits on the bench, stone faced and unflappable. He sometimes gives directions to his players, but he seldom yells. And unless an official makes what Holmes deems to be an egregious error, he doesn’t yell at them, either. Instead, he discretely makes barbed comments as they pass by his seat on the bench.

   Iarocci does not have what they call a poker face, and he’s almost never quiet during a game. Like a man who has had too much coffee, Iarocci never sits for long. He looks out at the action, his eyes grow large and he yells, “Not there! Not there!” to one of his girls. Then the official blows his whistle, and Iarocci says, “No! No! You’ve got to be kidding me.” But that doesn’t have anything to do with the joke.

   When it comes to talking with the press, Holmes is very businesslike. He’s never curt or brusque with the members of the Fourth Estate, but he’s not likely to give them more than they asked for. The only exception coming when he’s pretty sure the writer completely missed a matter of some importance.

   Iarocci relishes his time with the press. Even after a defeat, Iarocci never gives a short interview. He can be very quotable, and he enjoys being quoted. And that has everything to do with the joke.

After a game a few years ago, Iarocci made a comment to a reporter about what an honor it was to be coaching a game on the same floor as “the legendary Rod Holmes.” The remark found its way into the paper. Then “legendary” somehow became attached to Holmes’ name almost every time it appeared in the paper.

   And then, people in the community began to use the term. At the Ashtabula County Basketball Foundation, old friends and opposing coaches routinely referred to Holmes as “The Legend.” His players, even those former Jefferson stars who traveled great distances to be there, talked about their “legendary coach.” His current players were sometimes a little shy, but the word “legend” sometimes got into their remarks, too.

   On Tuesday, Iarocci and Holmes will gather their teams for a game in Falcon Gym for the first time since “The Legend” became just about Holmes’ sir name.

   So, what started as an inside joke is now common knowledge. But, if someone is referred to as a “legendary coach,” the assumption is that the coach has had a long, successful and storied career.

   As usual, Iarocci hit the nail on the head.

  

Out on a Limerick

 A couple of my recent entries in the Madkane Limerick-off.

   Moi?

  

   A man who was rather ill-bred,

   All scruffy and much too well fed,

   Would scream, belch and curse

   And write tasteless verse.

   And Tom was his name, so they’ve said.

  

  

   Bowling Them Over

  

   The woman who frequently bowled

   In the magazine ads of old

   In her Maidenform Bra,

   Made the guys ooh and aah.

   I bet she was brassy and bold.