Notes from the Home IX

  Thursday morning, the writing class met at as usual at the Kingsville Public Library, and I was there. Not in person, of course, but via Skype. For some reason, they couldn’t see me, but I could see them. I felt like Miss Francis, or whatever her name was, on Romper Room. “And I see Suzanne, and I see Jeanne, and I see Chuck, and I see Katie, and I see Gitta.” They were all Do-Bees, which is what I think Miss Francis called the well-behaved children in the television audience. I was a Do-Bee too, or maybe I wasn’t. They’ll never know; they couldn’t see me.

   Sometimes technology is a pain. But it is a wonderful thing when it allows us to be in the company of people nearly a thousand miles away. The only thing I couldn’t experience firsthand were the goodies Gitta brought to class. I could have had goodies of my own. I planned to have goodies of my own. I even went to the store Thursday morning to get goodies of my own, along with a few necessary items. But when I got back to the apartment, I discovered I had remembered all the needed items and forgotten the goodies. How’s that for misplaced priorities?

  

   Since moving here, I’ve thought a lot about Jesus’ comment to Peter: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” There’s no doubt my body is ready for a place such as Covenant Woods. My mind, though, believes I’m capable of doing all the things I once did. This is always frustrating and, at times, disheartening. Fortunately, I keep getting reminders that life is full of possibilities, and the secret is to concentrate on those things I can do and not worry about the things I can’t. And anyone who thinks I’m in need of a good swift kick in the backside, please feel free to administer it. I might wince a little and go off in a huff, but give me an hour or so, and I’ll be fine, and I’ll thank you for your sage advice.

   James, one of the maintenance men, dispensed some sage advice the other evening. He was sitting on a bench among the trees that edge the parking lot, waiting for the final five minutes of his shift to tick away, and I was making my post-dinner inspection of the grounds.  We got to talking, and pretty soon he was telling me how important it is to keep busy at things you enjoy doing. “My wife and I found that out when the kids starting getting older,”he said.

   James told me about his garden and how big his tomato plants are getting and how they’re covered with buds. “You like tomatoes right off the vine?” he asked. I told him I surely do, and he said he’d bring me some when they ripen.

  

   Now and then at dinner I sit at the same table as Lisa. She was born in Vienna, and married a GI soon after the end of World War II. “The Nazis were gone then,” she says. “But the Russians were trying to move in.” Her husband stayed in the Army and served in both Korea and Vietnam before he retired. He and Lisa must have had a terrific life together. She sometimes looks up from her plate and says to no one in particular, “My husband has been dead for twenty years, and I still miss him.”

   I forget how many grandchildren Lisa has, but she has said enough times for me to remember that she has eight great-grandchildren. To make sure that her kids, their kids and their kids’ kids all get a birthday card in a timely manner, Lisa makes a point of going to the card rack when she’s at the store, and if a card strikes her fancy, she’ll buy it. She gives the cards to her daughter, who lives here in Columbus, and who keeps them and keeps track of all the birthdays. When a birthday approaches, the daughter has Lisa over and they go through the cards so Lisa can decide which one is most fitting for the person about to be a year older.

  

   When I went to check my mail yesterday, a woman I don’t recall seeing here before was also getting her mail. She asked about the T-shirt I was wearing. This T-shirt, like almost every one I own, I told her, was payola, a gift from the organizers of an event I covered for the Star Beacon, this one, the Pyma-Laker 5K. She said she’d never heard of the Star Beacon. I told her that didn’t surprise me. Then she said she used to do some writing for the New York Times. I told her, I had heard of that paper. After her stint with the Times, she went to England. She didn’t say what she did there, but whatever it was it must have brought her into contact with royals, because she said she had to do a lot of bowing. By then, the hallway by the mailboxes was full of people, and she had to be somewhere. Too bad, but maybe we’ll run into each other again and have a chance to talk more. She can regale me with stories of New York and London, and I can entertain her with tales of Ashtabula.

  

   It’s raining this morning, a steady, gentle rain. The kind of pleasant rain you can lose yourself in thought asyou walk in it. Which brings me back to the spirit being willing, but the flesh – or in this case, the electric wheelchair – being ill suited for a walk in the rain.

   It’s cool out, and I’ve opened the sliding door. I can hear the rain as it falls on a small tree nearby, and there are a few birds chirping. Maybe I’ll go over by the door and lose myself in thought there.

    

A Lexeme or Two

In an uneventful life, getting the Word of the Day e-mail from Dictionary.com is an event. Sometimes, however, in the midst of more momentous events, the Word of the Day is overlooked, and a lengthy queue forms in my inbox. And so, the other day, having survived the storms and upheavals of relocation and safely returned to the doldrums of life, I sat down to go through the accumulated lexemes. I had no idea my inbox was full of lexemes until the word – which means a unit of language; a word – appeared in my inbox.

   That explains why the Word of the Day seldom makes me feel exceptionally stupid, and I can go on knowing I’m stupid, but only in a mediocre way. I’d never run across lexeme before, but so what? Chances are I’ll never use it. Although…

    “Oh, Tom, you luscious hunk of manhood, is it true you were a two-time All-American at Stanford and have three PhDs from Harvard and another from Yale?”

   “Yes it is, my sweet.”

   “Really?”

   “I give you my lexeme.”

   See, lexeme is out of place in ordinary conversation.  That does not, however, alter the fact that attractive, libidinous women ordinarily assume that I am a world-class athlete and noted scholar. You have my lexeme on that.

   Which brings to mind another word: hircine. It is an adjective, according to Word of the Day, and its third meaning is “lustful, libidinous.”  But to get to lustful and libidinous, you have to go through the first two meanings: “1, Of, pertaining to, or resembling a goat; 2, having a goatish odor.” If that doesn’t drain all the lustful libidinousness from you, nothing will.

   Some of the words in Word of the Day are words I was better off not knowing; words such as fard, which means to apply cosmetics.

   “Hurry up, honey, we’re going to be late for the dinner.”

   “Give me a minute. I’m almost ready.”

   “For Pete’s sake!. You’ve been farding around for an hour.”

   The words I’ll never use, even in the unlikely event that I remember them, just keep on coming; first there was ephebe. For a word that means “a young man,” ephebe has a definite feminine quality. It’s hard to imagine the Marines looking for a few good ephebes. The person who walks into a biker bar and says, “Wow, look at all the ephebes in their leather jackets,” probably won’t walk out. And the congressman who rises in the House to praise the fine ephebes in his district will be accused by FOX News of trying to advance the gay agenda.

   Brisance means the shattering effect of a high explosive. But, is the average person feeling the effect of a high explosive likely to comment on its brisance? Or are his remarks more apt to begin with “Oh shit” and race downhill from there?

   All these words, according to one Word of the Day e-mail, are selcouth, which means strange or uncommon. And for better or worse, the selcouth words in my vocabulary are outnumbered by the uncouth words.

   Strangely, while the words of the day I don’t know rarely make me feel dumb, the words of the day I do know always make me feel smart. Yesterday’s word was besot, and as soon as I opened the e-mail I was besotted with pride because I was familiar with the word.

   But the real allure of Word of the Day are the days it makes me feel exceptionally brilliant. A recent word was pococurante. As a noun, Word of the Day said pococurante means caring little, indifferent, nonchalant; as an adjective it means a careless or indifferent person. A pococurante, who somehow matched the definitions with the wrong parts of speech, must have been the editor that day. A few days later, the word of the day was luxate, which means to put out of joint or dislocate. All of the Word of the Day words are accompanied by two or three quotations in which the word is used. For luxate, the editors selected a sentence from The Royal Society of London, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections, a name that makes MENSA sound like a bunch of high school dropouts. The sentence read: “But at the same time, he thinks the bone will not remain in it’s place, but luxate itself again.” The Royal Society confused it’s and its, and the people at Word of the Day failed to insert [sic]. But I caught the mistakes.

   And that’s why I look forward to the Word of the Day e-mail each morning

Wish List

Cute, but dateless young Amanda,

While on vacation in Uganda,

Sat and moped on the veranda

Griping to her friend Miranda.

Said she, “I want to meet Santa.”

“And why is that?” asked Miranda.

“Well, because he is a man. Duh!”

Notes from the Home VIII

   For someone like me, who has always had difficulty remembering names, Covenant Woods isn’t a bad place to be. Or maybe it is. The better solution would be for me to pay more attention, to concentrate more when I’m introduced to people. But there are so many people here with memory problems that folks don’t get upset when you ask what their name is for the thirty-seventh time.

   Some moments of forgetfulness, however, are more disappointing than others. Friday at dinner, I was at the same table as Joe, a retired transit dispatcher from New York City. Also at the table was an attractive woman, who is quite young looking by Covenant Woods standards. It seems that about a week ago, when there was a band here playing fifties music, some country and some blues, Joe and the woman danced. Joe didn’t mind at all that the woman didn’t remember his name. But - I think he has got his eye on her - he was very disappointed when the woman said she didn’t remember dancing with him. I noticed they were sitting together at dinner last night, but I didn’t get a chance to ask Joe if she had remembered him from dinner the night before.

  

   Woodruff Farm Road has four lanes and is busy most of the time. But on Sunday morning there is very little traffic, and I keep thinking I should - like the chicken - get to the other side and check out Publix, the supermarket in the plaza over there. To get there, I would have to go down the asphalt path to the plaza where Piggly-Wiggly is and then down the service road. From the end of the service road to the Publix parking lot is a straight shot. When traffic is light, I could dart across Woodruff Farm Road’s four lanes without being a traffic hazard, or a statistic.

   The only thing holding me back is a growing loyalty to Piggly-Wiggly. All the employees are so friendly. Even another customer was helpful this morning. I was in the check-out line, and the woman in front of me, who was watching the cashier ring up her groceries, turned around and took a step toward me. Thinking she was setting off on a mad dash to get something she’d suddenly remembered she’d forgotten. I backed up to let her by. “No,” she said. “I was just going to put your groceries on the counter for you.” And she did. The cashiers all call me “darlin’” or “baby,” which is a little disconcerting. But they call me that after they’ve rung up and bagged my groceries. That’s when they say, “Come around here, darlin’ and I’ll put these bags in your tote.”

   I wonder sometimes if it is a cultural thing. Maybe this Southern hospitality is the same in every store. But I’m enjoying it, and a supermarket by any other name is still just a supermarket, so I keep going to Piggly-Wiggly.

  

   About a week ago, concerned that I wasn’t doing enough writing, I went to a few Internet sites that dispense writing prompts. One of the prompts I made note of was, “Write about something you think needs to be invented.” I didn’t have anything in mind at the time, but a half-hour later I did. That’s when I decided to take a shower. Before getting some clean clothes from the dresser, I emptied the pockets of the shorts I was wearing. I pulled out my wallet, and I pulled out my keys, and then my pockets were empty. And I said, “Where the hell is my cell phone?” I went around the apartment, looking in all the places I’ve found it before when I thought it was lost. It wasn’t in any of them.

   Reluctantly, I picked up the other phone. I did it reluctantly because, a few nights before when I couldn’t find my cell phone, I dialed its number from the other phone. I expected to hear ringing from the closet or maybe from under the pile of stuff that had accumulated on the table. Instead, it rang from my pocket. I was alone in the apartment, no one was there to witness my idiocy, yet I was embarrassed.

   But having searched the apartment thoroughly, the only thing left to do was to call my cell phone, listen for the ring and prepare to be humbled again. However, when I called this time and listened, I didn’t hear a thing. I went in the bathroom and tried again, thinking maybe the cell phone had fallen into the hamper. Not a sound. Well, maybe I dropped it somewhere when I went to get my mail earlier and had stopped in the library. But it wasn’t in either of those places when I went back to look. So, I gathered my courage and went to the front desk and asked if anyone had found a cell phone. “No,” the receptionist said. “But I’ll let you know if someone does.”

   Back in my apartment, still in need of a shower, I went into the bathroom, stood up to take off my shorts, and there on the seat of the wheelchair was my cell phone. I had been sitting on it all along, and now it was blinking to let me know I had a missed call; two missed calls, actually, both from me. If I can break wind with enough gusto to shame myself in a crowded, noisy room, someone should be able to make a phone that rings loud enough and vibrates vigorously enough to be noticed by the 175-pound man sitting on it. That’s what I think needs to be invented.

  

   My brother Jim and sister-in-law Susan came over from Birmingham yesterday. Then Russ, Karen, Jim, Susan and I went to lunch. We took two cars, because I can get in and out of the Aveo, and Jim drives a pickup truck that is well beyond my increasingly meager abilities. Karen drives an Echo, so even without the Aveo there would have been a vehicle I could manage.

   The Aveo, though, is special. It is functioning, noxious-fumes spewing proof that sometimes the best thing that can happen is not getting what you want. Around Memorial Day 2005, I went to Nassief’s on Main Avenue looking for a new car. I liked the Aveos, and I was hoping to get one with standard transmission. I always had better luck maneuvering in the snow with a standard transmission. But there weren’t any on the lot, and I wanted a new car now. It was either get an automatic at Nassief’s or shop around elsewhere. And I hate to shop.

   Buying a car with automatic transmission was a brilliant, brilliant move. In the fall of 2005, my left leg, which had been occasionally obstinate, took on obstinacy as a full-time occupation. How much longer I would have been able to work the clutch pedal is anyone’s guess, but it wouldn’t have been for very long. Instead, I was behind the wheel of my Aveo until December 2010.

   But I digress. I really enjoyed seeing Jim and Susan. As they were leaving, Jim said they’d be back, maybe back so often they’d seem like a bad penny. In times like this, I told him, a man can use all the bad pennies he can get. And that goes for all you other bad pennies, too.

  

Notes from the Home VII

Russ and Karen brought dinner with them when Tuesday. They usually cater Sunday supper, but they pushed it back this week, because Karen wasn’t up to par Sunday. A one-pot meal of bowtie macaroni, spinach, peppers and such was on the menu. It was very good, which wasn’t surprising. The surprising thing was that Russell picked out the recipe. I don’t remember him being much for vegetables beyond peas and corn. Of course, spinach is an acquired taste, and it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve acquired it myself.

   The pressure is on Russ these days. He wants to beef up his resume by adding “illustrator” to it. And already the demands for his illustrious illustrating talents are coming in from across the country, or at least from Idaho and Georgia. The people making the demands are his mother and father.

   Fifteen or twenty years ago – my how time flies – when we lived on Myrtle Avenue, Debbie wrote a children’s book and put it in the drawer.  After she’d been in Idaho a few years, she took a writing class, opened the drawer, dusted off the book, got Russ to do the illustrations and tried to market it. Then the book went back in the drawer until Debbie pulled it out again a few months ago and decided to publish it through Author House. But first, she wants Russ to gussy up the illustrations.

   I, on the other hand, have been happily writing triolets almost from the moment Suzanne, my writing mentor, introduced me to the form. The triolet is an eight-line poem with a rhyme scheme and a few repeating lines. To wit:

   

Bad Computer

My computer needs dissected

For not behaving as it ought.

Since it hates to be corrected,

My computer needs dissected

And most thoroughly inspected

Before it’s taken out and shot.

My computer needs dissected

For not behaving as it ought.

   In the cold, dark, snowy days of January and February 2011, I began writing triolets about animals, creatures such as the Missing Lynx, the Should-I-Otter, Cat-or-Pillars, and the like. I now have forty-one of them. Urged on by Suzanne and the members of the writing class, and prodded by my ego, I’m getting very anxious for the day when the triolets are together in a book with “By Tom Harris; Illustrated by T. Russell Harris” on the cover. To that end, I ask Russ about his progress on those illustrations every chance I get.

   So, Russ, in addition to his job at Barnes & Noble, trying to keep a steady flow of cartoons going out to various publications, and being without a computer for nearly a month – the computer is apparently as important to the modern cartoonist/illustrator as pen and ink – is fending off his parents. “I’ve got about nine projects going,” he told me the other day. How this all will end is a mystery. Russ is the key. He is the exceptionally talented one, and he could give his parents’ efforts a touch of class. Unless, of course, his parents drive him crazy first.

  

   It seems there is always something blocking a portion of the sidewalk when I go to the shopping center at the end of asphalt path through the woods.  When I first got down here, the Kmart was a week or so from closing, and much of the garden department was on the sidewalk. There was of room for those on foot to get by, but not quite enough for me and the wheelchair. Then the store closed, the pallets of top soil disappeared from the sidewalk and a truck from the sign company arrived to remove all evidence that the building had ever been a Kmart, blocking the sidewalk in the process. After the signs were gone, the area around the entrance to the erstwhile Kmart was all a jumble of people loading their trucks with the fixtures and shelving units they’d bought. Yesterday, stock cars were being taken off trailers and placed around the entrance to Piggly-Wiggly.

   None of this is much of an inconvenience; I get off the sidewalk and use the fire lane, unless it is also blocked. Then I have to edge ever closer to the traffic in the parking lot. And I’ve got this thing about parking lots. A few years ago, we went out west. In addition to the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park and many, many other natural wonders, we visited the Air Force Academy. As I was making my way through one of the parking lots there, a black SUV started to back out of a parking space. I stopped. Then the SUV stopped, which I took to be a signal that the driver was waiting for me to go by. Off I went, and then here the SUV came and sideswiped me. “What the hell was that?” the driver yelled. “That was the guy I told you about,” the woman in the back seat, whom I think was probably his mother-in-law, said. The wheelchair left a mark on the SUV, which I hope didn’t wash off, and I’m sure the backseat driver reminded the guy in the driver’s seat of his incompetence at every opportunity for the next month, which is a satisfying thought. The wheelchair wasn’t damaged, but I was left with an abiding fear of parking lots.

   And while I was over at the shopping center earlier this week, I realized why newspapers don’t make money these days. My sole purpose that day was to get a Ledger-Enquirer and a USA Today. I had a pocket full of change, and both papers have a box along the sidewalk. According to the instructions on the USA Today’s box, I was to put the coins in the slot; listen for them to drop: open the door and get a paper. All went well until I got to Step 3: the door refused to open. While there was no Step 4 listed on the box, I assumed it was “push coin return and take money from the tray,” which I did. Then I repeated the first three steps, and after uttering a few imprecations, repeated Step 4, and took my quarters to the Ledger-Enquirer’s box. Different paper; same result. So it was on to Piggly-Wiggly, which doesn’t carry USA Today and charges eighty cents for the Ledger-Enquirer that can be had for seventy-five elsewhere. Don’t ask me why.

  

   I finally have an Internet connection in my room. When I didn’t have a connection in my room, I had to go to the library, which has Wi-Fi. I’m a little concerned that because I no longer have to leave my room to get on the Internet, I won’t get out of the room as much as I should. On the other hand, I’ll be able to Skype to my writing class, and Skype with Beth, Ken and Hayden. That’s something forward to. This morning I got an e-mail from Beth. It was a video of Hayden splashing around in the bathtub.  It made my day.

  

Notes from the Home VI

   I’ve lost my rookie status at Covenant Woods. The “Welcome the New Residents” bulletin board, with its pictures of the ten newest residents, is across the hall from the mailboxes. When I went for my mail Saturday, my mug, which had graced that board since March 26, was gone. I guess I am now an old timer at the old-folks home – excuse me, in the retirement community. I better watch what I say. A lot of the old folks here are old enough to be my parents and a darn sight more spry than I am. But, as long as I’m in my electric wheelchair, I can beat any of them in a foot race. 

   It was two youthful miscreants, however, who enlivened last week’s happy hour. Every Friday afternoon, Covenant Woods serves the residents wine, beer and munchies. William and Richie, the two youngest residents, according to Richie, had been working on getting happy long before the appointed hour. Richie, stumbling in, joined us in the library toward the end of the hour and reached for a bottle of wine. But Penelope, the activities director, swooped down and snatched it away.  She offered him a Sprite. After some not always polite discussion, Richie was sent to his room.

   Apparently William wasn’t noticeably drunk at the start of happy hour – I got there halfway through – but he was getting obnoxious when it ended. Al, a retired Army colonel in his nineties, told William, “You’re making a damn fool of yourself.” And William went on making a fool of himself, even after he and everyone else had adjourned to the dining room for dinner, where Penelope played bouncer for a second time.

  

   Saturday evening, Al didn’t tell me that I’m a damn fool, but he did tell me to be careful. I was out taking my evening tour of the grounds, and as is my wont, I went down the entry road to the main road, which is a busy four-lane affair. Just as I was turning around, Al came by in his car. “You shouldn’t come down here, and don’t even think about crossing the street,” he said. And he asked if I had a cell phone on me – I did – in case I needed help. Sunday morning, he came into the library as I was availing myself of the Wi-Fi and said several residents over the years had wandered out on to the road. He said he once came upon a resident in a wheelchair crossing the road who had no idea where she was. Now it scares him whenever he sees a resident, whether walking or in a wheelchair, near the road.

  

   A long hallway connects Building B, where I live, to the main building that houses the offices, dining room, the activity room, the library, and a few other things. There are lots of windows along the way; it is not a dark and dreary place. But the hall isn’t wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass, which results in those of us in them and those who use walkers spending time waving each other on and saying, “No, no, you go first.”

   Music is piped into the hallway. On my first trip down the hall, I assumed it came from Sirius or some elevator music supplier. But it wasn’t long before I came to the conclusion that there must be a pile of CDs stashed somewhere. I’m also convinced the person who selects the music changes weekly. The award for the programmer with the most eclectic taste goes to the person who was running the show my first week here. It seemed that each trip up or down the hallway that week was accompanied by either Patsy Kline singing “Walking After Midnight,” or a classical orchestra playing  J.S. Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

   I don’t know the words to many country standards, but I am familiar with “Walking after Midnight.” Anna was an Ash/Craft client I worked with for a few months in the early nineties. She was a short woman, a little on the pudgy side, nervous when she was in groups, and she had an accent right out of a West Virginia holler. But, oh, could the lady sing, and she knew a huge number of country songs. Anna was always anxious to get home, but she was scared to venture out into the hallways when they were filled with other clients rushing to the buses, and she would ask me to walk with her. As we made our way to her bus, she would look up to me with her big blue eyes and a smile that seemed to say,” Oh, Tom, you’re my hero,” and sing “Walking after Midnight”.

   Back in the halls of Covenant Woods, we listened to soft, instrumental versions of “Moon River” and “The Days of Wine and Roses” for a week. Last week was big band week: mostly Glenn Miller, and mostly “Moonlight Serenade” and “In the Mood,” another song that takes me back to the days when I was out and about and an intrepid sports reporter for the Star Beacon. One Saturday I covering a basketball game at Pymatuning Valley High School, and PV Jazz, a group far superior to your average high school pep band, was entertaining the crowd between the JV and varsity games. One of their selections was “In the Mood,” and across the way from me, two white-haired ladies clapped and swayed to the music just as they must have when they were young and the song was new.

   It’s funny how a song can take you back to a place. On Myrna Drive in Bethel Park, there was an organ in our living, and Mom, a very talented organist, played it for several hours every night. Dad made frequent stops at Volkwein’s music store on his way home from work to get sheet music for the old standards and the non-rock-and-roll hits of the day: songs such as “Moon River,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Mack the Knife,” “I Left my Heart in San Francisco,” “Hey Look Me Over,” and the like.

   One time during my teenage years, I spent several nights on the couch reading Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln was Shot, while mom played and Dad sat in the rocking chair and read the paper. Mom played a particular song a lot those nights. I no longer remember what it was, but for several years afterward, every time I heard that tune, either when Mom played it or on the radio, I was back in Ford’s Theater.

  

  

Notes from the Home V

It’s starting to warm up here. I looked at Weather.com’s  ten-day forecast yesterday, and the prognosticators said the highs will be close to or in the nineties for the next week. At least for today, Friday, they seem to be right. When I got up this morning about five o’clock, the thermostat said it was seventy-four in the room, and I opened the sliding door to let in the cool air. After two hours with the door open, the temperature in the room had risen to seventy-six.

   That is quite a change from Monday and Tuesday. After dinner Monday, I set out in the buggy to make to at least two laps around the Covenant Woods’ grounds. My goal was to see the wheelchair’s odometer reach eight hundred miles. If two laps didn’t do it, I was prepared to keep circling the place until it read 8-0-0. Prepared, that is, until I got outside, where I discovered that despite the abundant sunshine, it was not an evening for shorts and a T-shirt. I made one quick lap before hustling back inside, the odometer only slightly closer to the magic number. I don’t know if it was any warmer Tuesday, but I was better prepared, sporting jeans and a sweatshirt. After two laps that evening, I began my quest for nine hundred miles.

  

   Russ didn’t have to go to work until four, Tuesday, and he was kind enough to cart the old man around in the morning. We had lunch with Karen and Cecil, one of her colleagues, in a little restaurant downtown. It’s in a renovated building that must date from the 19th Century. We parked a block or two away, and the walk along the tree-lined sidewalk to the restaurant was very pleasant. While there were no signs of it that day, there must be some construction going on in the area, because in the middle of the block, next to the large red-brick building, in the shade of the trees, was a port-a-potty.

   Inside the restaurant, there was lots of wood: wooden floors, wooden tables, wooden chairs and wooden counters. And you could watch the pedestrians and the cars through large picture windows. It wasn’t ornate or anything, but it had enough ambiance that I thought it might be a little pricey. But the prices were reasonable and the food was good; an excellent combination.

  

   Back in Ashtabula County, the writing class convenes every Thursday morning at the Kingsville Public Library. I am indebted to Mary, who got me involved with it in the spring of 2009, when it met at the Conneaut Community Center for the Arts. I miss sitting around the table with Mary, Katie, Chuck, Jeannie, Gitta, Elaine, and Suzanne, our esteemed leader. And I think often of Celia, who has passed away, Joyce and Nancy, who have moved, and the others who dropped in from time to time. It was a most pleasant coincidence yesterday – Thursday – when I found a manila envelope from Suzanne in my mailbox. Inside, were marked up copies of a few things I’d e-mailed to her, and the program for the reading the group gave last Friday evening. And there was a clipping from the Star Beacon which said, “The reading will be dedicated to Tom Harris,” a very touching, but certainly undeserved honor. Between that, the ego-building lies Suzanne scribbled on the things I’d sent her, and her suggestion that I check out Blurb.com about the possibility of putting a book together, I suppose I’ll have to dedicate myself to being a more dedicated writer.

  

   Yesterday afternoon, there was a little get together to recognize those of us with April birthdays. Shirley, the receptionist, saw me heading into the dining room for the festivities and came after me to present the bill for the May rent. That blow was softened ever so slightly a few minutes later, when each of the birthday folks received a five dollar WalMart gift card.

   The entertainment was provided by Van Barnett. In the morning, Penelope, the activities director, announced over the intercom that Mr. Barnett sings just like Frank Sinatra. She must have been confused, because instead of Ol’ Blue Eyes, Van sounded much more like Ol’ Swivel Hips, and his show included several songs Elvis made famous. The highlight, for me anyway, was “Hey Good Looking.” The reason I enjoyed it so much was because I was sitting next to Evelyn, who is either ninety-one or ninety-two, depending on when you talk to her, and she enjoyed it much, much more. Swaying and clapping her hands to the beat, she joined right in singing, “Hey, hey, good looking, whatcha got cooking? Hows about cooking something up for me.” Two hours later, I talked to her for a moment at dinner, and she couldn’t remember having been to the party and was angry that no one had told her about it.

   Not wishing to be overdressed for the affair, I wore my Ashtabula Icons T-shirt.  Ashtabula Icons is the name of the multiple sclerosis support group that meets monthly at KSU-Ashtabula. As I made my way back to my room, a man headed the other way looked at the shirt and said, “Ashtabula!” He was in a hurry and didn’t stop to talk; he kept going right out the door. But he said “Ashtabula” as if he is familiar with the place, and he didn’t pronounce it “ash-TAB-ula.”

   The number of people who are aware of Ashtabula often surprises me. When Nancy and I went to Boston last summer, a gentleman on the train told us he was living in California and had lived in Indonesia for several years. When he asked where we were from, we hurried to explain where Ashtabula is in relation to Cleveland. But, he cut us off. “I’m familiar with Ashtabula,” he said. He had retired from General Electric and had made several visits to the Conneaut plant over the years.

   A few days later, we went to hear the Boston Pops. The couple at the table next to us ordered what they thought was a small bottle of wine. It wasn’t a small bottle, and they shared the wine with Nancy and me. After the concert, we talked for a few minutes, thanking them and unsuccessfully trying to give them money for the wine. They too were from California, and they weren’t at all mystified when we said we were from Ashtabula. The man had been a musician in his younger days, and one of his friends at the time was a trumpeter from Ashtabula.

  

   Bethany sent some more video clips of Hayden this week. It is a long, long way from rolling around on the floor with him and cuddling him and trying to get him to say “Grandpa,” but it’s the next best thing. And I’m eternally grateful that Beth and Ken take the time to make and send them, and for the modern technology that makes it all possible.