Category: Family

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Anatomy of a Toot

As promised, photographic documentation of what’s called locally “a toot.”

But having spent two hours posting 11 pictures in that little photo album, I’m reminded why I don’t do it more often. I mean, it takes two hours. Part of the problem is the seeming inflexibility of the TypePad photo albums: The pictures appear on your working site in the reverse order you chose them; when you post them, they appear in reverse order again — or, to look at it another way, in the same order you orginally picked them. That always confuses me and I wind up writing absurdly prolix captions (also time consuming) that are supposed to have some sort of narrative order but come out rather jumbled. The current effort’s a case in point. Could be that later I’ll go back in and try to fix my fractured storytelling. But for now: Bed.

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Detailing, West Oakland Style

Honda

Windshield

Tom went to a friend’s birthday party in West Oakland last night. Locally, saying "West Oakland" or "East Oakland" can be code for "mostly poor and mostly crime-ridden." The plan was for Tom to spend the night at his friend’s place; Kate and I were OK with that since he wasn’t going to be abroad in the neighborhood, which, frankly, can be dangerous at night.

The phone rang about 1:30 in the morning. I don’t like middle-of-the-night calls simply because they’re usually wrong numbers or bad news. I had been asleep and wasn’t able to get to the phone before our voicemail kicked in, but I wasn’t assuming the worst: Tom’s always been great about checking in with us when his plans change, and he knows we’d rather he wake us up is something’s going on that we ought to know. I called our voicemail, and there was a message from him: His friend had come out of his house to find Tom’s car, parked on the street in front, fairly seriously vandalized: smashed windshield, smashed passenger’s-side window, and crushed-in roof — apparently someone had climbed on the car and jumped up and down on it.

I listened to the message, and before I could call Tom he called back. He was pretty upset, but he was handling things pretty well: He and his buddies had pushed the roof back out, and he had already thought through calling the police and the insurance company. I was pretty calm, for me — just angry over the wanton destruction involved, really; the important thing was that Tom and his friends were all OK.

Later on, Tom called the police; in Oakland, the cops apparently don’t bother to send anyone out for cases like these, and they took the report over the phone. Then he and a friend drove the car to her house so he could park in her gated driveway — it was only a matter of time until some passerby started impromptu salvage operations on the car’s interior. Kate and I drove down to meet him there — the scene above. Looking the car over, it looked like all the damage came from one person — the same footprints were all over the roof and on a couple of windows that he apparently tried and failed to break. I drove the car the slow way back to Berkeley. I thought maybe I’d get some reaction from people on the street — "Hey, what happened to your car?" — and I had a good line ready: "Just got it detailed!"   

Now, I just feel bad for Tom. He and some of his friends have grown attached to it during their trips to concerts, and he calls it the "Machine Messiah." It’s just sad to see your wheels trashed. But he says, "The Machine Messiah will roll on."

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Happy 80.5, G.E.

Back on the 2nd of the month, friend and former high school English teacher at Crete-Monee High School, G.E. Smith, was the honoree at a big bash celebrating his 80th birthday (which was actually January 2; but out of respect for the majority of humanity that doesn't want to travel to northern Illinois in the dead of winter, he waited until the unbearably hot, muggy days of early July to stage a fete). I didn't make it — new job, just returned from a trip to the Midwest, et cetera.

He had asked me to speak at the event — to be one of a panel of people who would "roast" him. Even though I couldn't go to the party, I made a last-minute stab at writing something for someone else to read. This is it:

***

From a distance of about four or five months, I loved the idea of roasting G.E. What a natural target! The first guy I knew who used a pocket protector! And who *always* carried nine or ten different pens in his shirt pocket — black ink … and blue, red, green, brown, orange, purple, yellow and … invisible.

And yeah, there was his fridge. Stocked with the full array of Ocean Spray products and maybe a pickle jar with just the pickle water still in it and some leftovers that were evolving into new life forms. He had handwritten tags on some jars — an opportunity to exercise his sense of humor. Here's a label — "gorilla beds." "Gorilla beds?" you'd ask more or less innocently. He'd look at you and say, "Ape-ricots."

Get it? And that illustrates another key facet of the G.E. persona: Unashamedly bad punster.

Of course, G.E.'s friends at the E.P.A. eventually declared the fridge a Superfund site — at least that's what the newspaper said. But not before G.E. had demonstrated to his many visitors what he suggested was a genetic capacity to eat old, over-the-hill, and past-the-expiration-date delicacies that he had aged to perfection in the ice box. Maybe he was right. He's still among us to sing the praises of moldy peaches.

So, OK, yes — there's lots of stuff you could pick out from G.E.'s curious existence and roast him for it. His shocking fashion sense, maybe. That's "fashion," in quotes. His taste for homemade recreations like yard golf. His ultralogical grading system, so massively straightforward that he'd have to pull a week of all-nighters to finish his semester grading on time. Maybe his biggest flaw is that he likes to hang out with people like us.

But the more I've thought about it and the closer the day has come, the more I feel G.E. is kind of roastproof. I mean, he's been getting roasted for years and years on a daily basis, and it has never seemed to faze him. Always the teacher, he even sent out a sheet to his "roasters" to suggest sample subjects on which he might be skewered. He helpfully listed 19 topics that might make good joke material, including quote "my philosophical, theological and moral-ethical codes" unquote.

Oh yeah! "Did you hear the one about G.E. and Ahura Mazda! It's a real side-splitter!" There — I was determined to get Ahura Mazda into the mix. G.E.'s a sucker for Zoroastrianism.

Anyway, G.E.'s roast crib sheet was his way of letting us know that anything and everything in his life is fair game so people wouldn't hold back on all the wild stuff they know about him. (He also warned about saying anything risque or using obscenities — but he forgot that we're talking about him. The most risque thing I think I've ever heard about G.E. is that he once failed to change his wiper blades on time. Mort Castle could probably turn that into a tale of terror for us.)

Now, there *is* something wild that comes through about G.E. after knowing him for a few decades — his declining, post-Eisenhower years. But it's not about any of the outward idiosyncrasies that he helpfully proposed as theme topics for his roast. By the way, G.E., you misspelled "idiosyncrasies" on that crib sheet. That's a big F-20 for you.

No, I'd say the wild thing about G.E. is that all that stuff we've been seeing — whether you got to know him as a kid running around Pleasant Hill or in the Navy Seabees or at Illinois Wesleyan or teaching back at Lexington High or holding forth at Crete-Monee or Homewood-Flossmoor or in his codger genealogist years — what we've been seeing all those years is a real, honest-to-goodness person who hasn't been afraid to be himself and to be honest with himself about who he is.

Like I said — always the teacher. And the lesson there is to live up to the injunction, whoever came up with it, to "know thyself." But that's not the wildest thing in his life, or the biggest lesson G.E. has tried to teach us.

No the biggest thing we've gotten from G.E., and the reason I think we're all here with him today, is his unfailing willingness to give to the people around him, whatever they needed, whatever was in his reach to do. Through all the years, that's the constant. He didn't list that as something to roast him about, but there it is.

All I have left to say is: Thanks, G.E.

<p>More on G.E. Smith<br />

<a href="http://infospigot.typepad.com/infospigot_the_chronicles/2006/04/a_teacher_.html " target="_blank">A Teacher</a><br /><a href="http://infospigot.typepad.com/infospigot_the_chronicles/2006/04/a_teacher_2.html" target="_blank">A Teacher (2)</a><br /><a href="http://infospigot.typepad.com/infospigot_the_chronicles/2006/06/test.html" target="_blank">In Which We Gather by the River</a><br />
</p>

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The Kid’s Back Home

I talked to Eamon — let’s see: Monday night Berkeley time; Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo. He was back home from the hospital and sounding great; it was such a relief to hear his voice. He told me all about what it’s like to have a collapsed lung (he thought he was having a heart attack). When he saw his chest X-ray at the hospital, his right lung was big and expanded and normal. On the other side was something that he said looked “like a spike.” It was his left lung, which the doctors said had collapsed to something like one-quarter its usual size.

So, after the surgery and the fever and the convalescence (and dealing with hospital personnel who thought, incorrectly, that he didn’t know what they were saying when they spoke Japanese) and the lack of a bedside telephone, for heaven’s sake, he’s back in his now very-comfortable-seeming apartment in Sato, just outside Tokyo.

Like I said: I am relieved.

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Solstice Ride

The summer solstice occurred at 11:46 p.m. last night, the 20th. I didn’t go out and fire off my handgun, because I forgot to buy one and I don’t have any ammo.

So today: The first full day of summer. The days are just about as long as they’re going to get. I spent the day in my office at the law school, and didn’t think much about the season. But when I got home, I decided to try to fight past my usual evening inertia and go out for a ride.

I didn’t get started till nearly 8 (7:54, actually), but figured I had enough time to make it to the highest point of Grizzly Peak Boulevard in the Berkeley Hills to see the sun go down (according to the online and newspaper almanacs I’ve found, sunset was at 8:35 p.m.).

I made it up to the little pullout where people go to look down on the city and watch the evening come on when the weather’s clear (there are plenty of evenings when the fog cuts visibility to 100 feet or less up in the hills, and I’ve been riding up there then, too). I made it without about three minutes to spare and watched the sun disappear behind a mountain peak somewhere in northwestern Marin County. Then I got on my bike and started to ride away when someone said, “Dan!”

It was my neighbor Piero, with his son Niko. We’d been standing about 10 yards apart, I’d guess. But all of us were so focused on watching this first day of summer close that we never saw each other. They drove back down, and I finished my ride.

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The Day After Graduation Day

It happened: Thom graduated from high school. That’s not the shocker. This is: When you hear people say things like, “Gee, it seems like just last week that we were taking him to the first day of pre-school,” believe them. It’s true. I saw our neighbor Asa today — he lived next door when we moved in in April 1988, and he’s still there. He and one of his roommates once baby-sat for Tom (then without the H). Their big adventure while Kate and I were out for the evening was changing his diaper. I know it happened a long time ago. But not that long ago, and now that kid is getting ready to pack up his stuff and move on. It’s what’s supposed to happen among us middle-class Americans and what does happen when all your hopes and work and planning and luck fit together right. Two boys out the door to next adventures. I can’t believe how quickly it all happened.

That’s all for now, I guess, except to say that for the most part I liked the event. It was crowded and wild. The Greek Theatre has an official capacity of 8,500, and the place looked like it was packed. It was as close to a true community celebration as Berkeley has — all the kids in public school go to Berkeley High (if they haven’t managed to get themselves sent to the “alternative” campus a few blocks away), and it seemed like all the families with seniors showed up. The crowd was raucous. The kids were often unruly. Most of the student speakers — and there were many — were sadly forgettable. In an exercise of hyper-democracy or gesture of anti-elitism, the program didn’t explain how any of the kids earned the distinction of a speech or say whether they were chosen by lottery. Still, I loved seeing so many of the kids I’ve known or heard about over the years going through the graduation line; and it was a great moment when the ceremony ended and the 680-some kids in the class just moshed together for about 15 or 20 minutes. It was one group of very happy-looking kids.

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Raining Monkey Wrenches

Radar

Nature’s mid-June turn toward winter continues, prompting a local news anchor to say, "This rain has certainly put a monkey wrench on a lot of special events." I wouldn’t dare try to improve on that.

But by my completely unofficial calculations, the two mild storms that have blown in from the Pacific over the past week may have been enough for Berkeley to break its record from June rainfall. Old record, 1.21 inches, in 1967; total this month: something more than that — a weather station up at the Lawrence Hall of Science, at a higher altitude than the official weather station on the UC campus, says it’s gotten 1.28 inches so far.

In related news: Tom’s last real day of high school was today. The graduation is tomorrow evening. Outdoors at the Hearst Greek Theatre on campus. Beware the meteorological monkey wrench. Kate and I met the Berkeley High principal at the grocery story the other night — sometimes this is a small town — and he said, "Hope it doesn’t rain. But if it does — well, we’ll do it anyway. There’s nowhere else to go."

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Pneumothorax, the Sequel

The latest on Eamon’s collapsed lung is this: I talked to Sakura about midnight Monday, Pacific time (about 4 p.m. Tuesday, Tokyo time). Eamon’s doctor recommended a surgical procedure — something like arthroscopic surgery, carried out with a probe — to repair the lining surrounding the lungs and thus prevent a recurrence of this episode. Sakura, who was at the hospital with her mom (who had traveled down from their family home in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo), said the doctor told her everything went fine. Eamon was still knocked out when we spoke. It will probably be a while before we speak directly, because there are no phones in his hospital room, and apparently the hospital forbids using cellphones in the rooms, too. His only telecommunications option is to go to a public phone elsewhere in the hospital, but apparently he’s been in too much pain to get to it so far.

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Pneumothorax

The phone rang early this morning; not super early, but about 7 a.m., earlier than we usually get calls on a Sunday. It was Sakura, our daughter-in-law, calling from Tokyo. The combination — early morning, and the fact it was Sakura, not Eamon, on the phone, had an instantly alarming effect; that only increased as I listened to Kate’s end of the conversation — something had happened with Eamon, and he was in the hospital.

After a minute, I groggily got on the phone. The story is this: Eamon apparently woke up Sunday morning and found it extremely difficult to breathe. Sakura called an ambulance, and he was taken to a hospital. Once there, doctors determined Eamon had suffered a collapsed lung (also known as "pneumothorax").

That’s easy enough to treat, apparently, though the process doesn’t sound pleasant. Here’s the way one option is described: "Definitive treatment involves placing a plastic tube within the chest cavity, through a small incision near the armpit, under suction and water seal. This chest tube may need to stay in place for a few days before it can be removed."

In terms of what causes a spontaneous pneumothorax, smokers are at higher risk than most people. But Eamon’s not a smoker. It turns out he falls into another risk group — tall, thin people, among whom this condition occurs more frequently than among us somewhat shorter and wider folk. The doctor who saw him after he was admitted said surgery might be necessary to prevent a recurrence.

So what do we do now? Just wait to hear from Eamon. Under normal circumstances, it’s so easy to communicate back and forth that the 5,000-plus miles between us doesn’t seem like a big deal. Suddenly, we have a situation where there’s no substitute for physical presence in terms of being able to give comfort (and get it) and really size up the situation. Having the impulse (or the need) to go is one thing, and going is another:  I actually just found a round-trip United flight to Tokyo from San Francisco that’s priced at … $9,555.24. Seriously. (I also found a flight on a non-household-name airline, Asiana, for something like $1,400).