Number 6's Blog

As a mental exercise I decided to pick the 5 days that really stand out among all others in my life. Without further ado here they are:

The Day I Burnt My Leg

I was 4 ,maybe 5 years old the day I burnt my leg. Dad had started a fire in the barnyard. My older brother, Jim, and I were playing around with the fire. Jim was two years older than I so he was 6 or 7. My pants caught on fire on my left leg. I don’t remember but Mom told me Jim threw me done on the ground and put out the fire. But the damage was done. I had 3rd degree burns over 90 percent of my left leg.

Mom and Dad loaded me in the backseat of our 47 Plymouth sedan. My head rested on Mom’s lap if you can call it “rested”. I remember that ride clearly like it was yesterday. I had never felt pain like that before and still haven’t in my 70 some years later.

You have to remember we lived on a farm in the back of nowhere, Mercer County Illinois. They drove me into the nearest town with a doctor, Alexis, where Dr. Bowen cleaned out the wound and bandaged it up.

I spent that summer laying on the couch in our living room. We did not have TV yet so I guess I listened to the radio. That may have been where I learned to read. I just don’t remember but I do remember reading pretty well by the time I started grade school at 5 years old. Getting back to the couch, I was hot, the couch was itchy, and my leg hurt like hell.

70 some years later I still have the scar although it doesn’t cover my entire leg anymore.

The Day Kennedy was Assassinated

I was a senior at Alexis High School (another school district that is no more due to consolidation) in Bess Hussey’s English Literature class when the Principal announced Kennedy’s assassination over the Intercom.

Now Bess Hussey’s was the oldest teacher I ever had. She was from somewhere in the South and had never lost her southern accent. The rumor was she could remember when her family had slaves. She absolutely adored William Shakespeare and therefore to her English Literature was every work of William Shakespeare.

Anyway back to John Kennedy; Miss Hussey told us to lay our heads down and pray for his family and for the Country. I don’t really remember what I was thinking then. The magnitude of that event did not hit me until later. Within a few minutes the Principal called off classes for the rest of the day. Since Alexis was a small school in a small town we did not have to wait long for the buses to take us home.

All TV programming was suspended that weekend and was replaced with endless news of the assassination and the aftermath. The TV was not that big of a deal. When you are a farmer you are always busy no matter what occurs in the outside World. Back in those days being good Lutherans no one worked on Sunday. You went to church Sunday morning and in the afternoon you watched the Bear game. Unlike everything else in the nation the NFL did not pause for the weekend, they played their regularly scheduled games. However the TV did not show the games. Instead we saw endless reruns of the assassination, Johnson taking the oath, and carriages drawn very slowly by horses with boring requiem music. Dad was madder than Hell. He was a Lutheran Republican who although he never said so I’m sure he thought the Catholic Democrat Kennedy got just what he deserved. In any case, not important as a Bears game.

The Day We were Married

August 12, 1972 – A day that will go down in infamy – Just kidding. That was the day we were married.

I guess we need to start a few weeks before the day we were married. We have been dating for quite awhile when one day I, out of the blue, proposed. I was pretty stupid back then. Maybe naive is a better description. For example I had not even thought of purchasing an engagement ring. I was still in College with another year to graduate and figured we would tie the knot in maybe a year. Gwen, however, had different ideas when she said how about August which was two months in the future.

She settled on August 12, 1972. Now I was still in college going to the Summer term. Gwen picked the weekend before finals. Take my advice: don’t ever get married in Johnson County, Texas in August. The whole weekend was disgustingly hot. I remember a couple nights before the wedding driving around Fort Worth at 10 PM and it was still 96 degrees. Jerry pronounced Texas uninhabitable.

The rest of this section is a series of vignettes.

Gwen planned and organized the wedding while I took classes. Don’t remember what but probably something from the physics and math departments.

Her dad who was famous all over Johnson County for being cheap, except for buying Chryslers, gave her a budget of $500 which is almost nothing for a wedding even back then. Gwen was great at saving money. For example she took her Aunt Geneva to Neiman-Marcus to look at wedding dresses. Then Aunt Geneva created her a copy of her favorite.

Continuing on keeping the cost to a bare minimum her cousin, Eva, sang for the wedding.

Along the same lines our reception was in her mom and dad’s home.

We planned to have the wedding in the West Side Church of Christ. Because they were a church of Christ they did not allow musical instruments in the church. However they let us bring a a piano for the wedding as long as we removed it before midnight.

We had Friday night practice meal in a local Mexican Restaurant.

That night the bachelor party was in my apartment with Jim, Nancy, their kids, and my brother Jerry. Don’t remember if there was anyone else. We played cards and drank beer all night. I don’t remember any hard liquor. I woke up the morning of my wedding feeling fine so I must not have drank much.

My brother Jim was my best man with two friends from Fort Worth as groomsmen. I don’t remember anything about the maids of honor. Jim’s young son Brian was the ring bearer.

Right after the wedding before the reception we moved the piano out of the church and back to whomever we borrowed it from.

The reception was forgettable I think because I don’t remember anything about it. Plus, I married into a Church of Christ family where everything was sinful except eating and Dr. Pepper.

Our Honeymoon was two nights since I had to get back for finals. The first night was in her Uncle’s lake cabin in Conroe. A real rustic facility. The second was in Houston. Another example of my naivety was that we did not have a reservation anywhere and ended up finding a room at a Howard Johnson Motel. I had a major sinus attack and we spent most of the weekend sneezing into handkerchiefs.

We returned Monday night to my apartment which was now also hers. The next day I aced my final as I did the others the rest of the week.

The day 9/11 happened

A day that will go down in infamy to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I was in Silicon Valley that week – Palo Alto to be exact. When I traveled to the West Coast I had trouble adjusting to the time change and therefore would get up real early and go for a run. That particular morning, which was a Tuesday if I remember correctly, I was watching CNN while I was dressing for the run. A CNN news flash stated a small private airplane had collided with one of the twin towers. I did not think much of it but while on my run listening to KQED, the local public radio station, the story changed from a small private plane to probably a large commercial airplane..

Back in the hotel room I tuned into CNN and watched as the horrified hosts and I watched the 2nd commercial airplane ram the 2nd tower. I was shocked as was the rest of American.

I was there on business for meetings with an associate contractor with Scott Verrei, Dan Corpman, Galyon Kath, and someone else whose name escapes me. Not knowing what else to do, we went to work. The associate contractor was just as unsure as we were as to how to proceed. We held meetings that day although our minds and hearts were somewhere else. We contacted the home office who was just as clueless and told us to stay there until the company decided what we should do.

By Noon that day all the air traffic across the U.S. was grounded and we could not have flown home anyway.

That evening we had trouble finding a restaurant open for dinner. Finally, we found a Chevy’s Mexican Restaurant that stayed open until 7. We ended up eating there every evening because everything else was closed.

The days came and the days went. Garland told us everyday to stay put until they decided otherwise. The planes were still grounded anyway.

Then came Friday morning, the home office told us to procure a couple rental cars and drive home. They decided the drive would take two days and had booked us rooms at a hotel in Flagstaff Arizona. We started off at Noon Friday and arrived at our Flagstaff Hotel at 2AM. Scott, Dan, and I were in one car. Scott and Dan did all the driving while I relaxed in the backseat since I did not care to drive and they seemed to relish driving.

The next morning we met for breakfast real early, 6AM if I remember correctly. Then we drove straight through to Garland arriving sometime after midnight. Twas another boring day with me in the backseat taking naps, reading my books, and watching the scenery until dark.

The drive was pretty uneventful except another car sideswiped us knocking a bumper off. We drove back and picked it up before continuing on.

That was typical of E-Systems to have us drive home during the weekend and paying for only one night’s stay. I’m probably not being fair. The decision was not E-Systems, it was our Building 582 financial guy.

We had quite a week and weekend but much better than some of our fellow employees. A group of our corporate officers were passengers on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. That resulted in corporate policy grounding all employees for quite a while and when we could fly we had to book separate flights.

The World is a dangerous place and will continue to be as long as it contains the Human Race.

The first three were very easy but after that the choices were much harder to pick.

The day Gwen was diagnosed with PSP

Gwen started having problems years ago. Her first symptoms were not being able to write certain words with her right hand (she is right handed). As the years flew by her symptoms slowly worsened. Little by little she lost use of her right hand and then her right arm. Her speech became harder to understand.

Our family doctor did not have a clue what was causing her problem. Therefore he sent her to a specialist. Over the years one specialist sent us to another and the other specialist sent us to yet another specialist.

Finally one specialist diagnosed her with Parkinson’s Disease. Her symptoms were similar to Parkinson’s but yet different.

There came a day we agreed she could not drive anymore because she had lost much of her neck and eye movement. Furthermore her balance was slowly becoming worse.

We finally saw a Specialist who declared she does not have Parkinson’s because all the normal treatments did not have any effect, and the brain scans are not those of someone with Parkinson’s. He sent us to the Neurology Research Clinic at UT Southwestern to Dr. Virkam Sakkottai.

He studied her brain scans. Had her walk and move some of her muscles. He then started asking questions like: Did Gwen’s problems start with not being able to write certain words?”. We replied yes. He kept asking questions and we kept replying yes.

Finally he said: “Gwen you have Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP).”

I have no idea what that meant as I had never heard of PSP.

The doctor then commenced to describe PSP, prognosis for cure (none), and the future we can expect. He spent maybe two hours answering all our questions.

By the time we left I was dismayed. My dad had Parkinson’s, the last few years of which were not pretty. However, It was good to finally have a definite diagnosis after having spent 4 years bouncing around from specialist to specialist with no conclusive diagnosis.

Based on her symptoms he was certain she had PSP at least since 2018. The typical PSP afflicted person lives 5-10 years after the onset of PSP. However he thought she would last at least that long if not longer because of her excellent physical condition (thanks Orange Theory).

As I write this it’s now at least 7 years. Gwen is now confined to a wheelchair. She cannot use either hand or arm. She can only say a few words. Yet, we carry on as best we can, which is all anyone can do.

Contenders

Choosing the top 3 was easy. After that there were many contenders but in the end I chose the last two after due consideration. Others that contended were:

1. The day dad was run over by the Farmall F20 – Already wrote about this in my blog. Maybe not a good reason
2. The day my parents moved me to Chicago – Quite a change from Outback Illinois farm to a city of 3 million and a basement apartment with two other students
3. The day Sara married – Sara’s was special because it was a destination wedding on the beach in Mexico
4. The day I moved to Fort Worth – After DeVry I accepted a job at General Dynamics in Fort Worth mostly because it was in the West and I had watched every John Wayne movie. I expected cactus, mountains in the background, and cowboys. What I got was not too different from Illinois except dryer and no corn
5. The day Claudia was born – Our first born. We have just moved to Garland Texas, Gwen caught the flu and went into labor. I drove to the hospital in Fort Worth with her in the back of the van holding a 5 gallon bucket to vomit into. After we arrived at the hospital Gwen was in labor 24 hours before Claudia was born. Those were the days before the husband was allowed in the labor and delivery room so I sat in the waiting area watching bad TV
6. My first ever day in Australia – What a change. In 1975 Sydney and Australia were very different from the USA and different than they are now.

That’s all at least for now. I better see what Gwen needs.