DAY 24: Solid as a Rock

DAY 24: Solid as a Rock

I mowed my front yard today.

In the grander scheme of things, maybe that doesn't sound all that impressive.

A year ago that would have been physically impossible. I could barely walk. I could handle going forward on a straight line. If I wanted to turn I had to progressively bend the line.  

Turning around took ages. Standing up from a seated position and walking was a crap shoot. I had to grab the nearest surface to pull myself forward or balance myself to turn. I stood at the top of the stairs and experienced the telescoping pull of vertigo. 

The Parkinsons was getting the best of me.

Physical Therapy gave me some weapons. 1-2-3-Step. Ah-ah-ah-ah-Walking-Now-I'm-Walking-Now. (Staying Alive if you're not hearing it.) Jazz Hands and playing Simon with light censors suctioned cupped to a mirror wall. Table exercises. Grape Vines. These exercises and activities and others kept my muscles from atrophying. I was grateful to be out, to be active, but I was also overly worried I'd have some sort of seizure or panic attack. Sometimes stepping out of the. bathroom triggered something inside of me and my heart would race. I couldn't understand why this would happen to me. One night, unable to sleep, I stared at the ceiling and I realized that for so long I had been this Bigger-Than-Life-Personality and when I developed Parkinsons I withdrew. I didn't know that version of me anymore. I retired because I didn't wan t to seem feeble. I had a real struggle with how people saw me now. Shaky hands and frozen legs. I pushed myself to keep up with PT.

Deep down inside, it didn't feel like I was getting any better.

You don't get better from Parkinsons.  

During all of this, I was taking a blood pressure medication that made my legs swell. I was on a low dosage of a Parkinsons medication because the higher dose exasperated my gambling habit. I could barely walk and I was driving to my bank to deposit cash to cover my ass. My neurologist finally convinced me to go on a supplementary Parkinsons drug. At the same time, my primary care doctor switched my blood pressure meds. The swelling went down. The gambling stopped. My neurologist sent me to a movement specialist. I started walking our dog around the backyard. I went back to physical therapy and passed every test to the point my trainers said, 'We got nothing left for you. You've outscored all the previous tests. Find a dance class or something.'

Things improved.

I still have little bouts of anxiety. I'm not that guy who ran speech activities in Michigan any more. Maybe some day I'll find something that I can rock like I did with MIFA, MSCI, MASC. I don't think I need to but if I wanted to, I could.

Just like mowing my front lawn. 

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.--Norman Maclean

DAY 23: Rock and Roll High School

By the time STRIPES premiered in 1981, PJ Soles was as popular in my group of friends as Farrah Fawcett had been for us in middle school. CARRIE. HALLOWEEN. ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL.  If not for the advent of cable TV, this gem would have escaped most of us.

Not only did this teenploytation movie solidify PJ Soles as an It Girl for the tail end of the Boomer generation, it introduced us to the Ramones. This was the era of the new wave music explosion. Hip Hop. Punk. Glam Rock. Brit Wave. Madonna. ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL brought it all home.

That's all I got. 

DAY 23: Rock and Roll High School

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY: 

A film has to be like a stone in the shoe.
-- Lars von Trier

DAY 22: Derby Day

DAY 22: Derby Day

Every year at this time I'm reminded of the time I gave my sister Linda  $10 to put on Jacklin Klugman to Show at the 1980 Kentucky Derby. Our middle sister was named Jacquelin and I was a fan of the horse's owner, Jack Klugman. I just figured it was meant to be.

Linda was going to the derby with a friend of hers. They were going to be on the lawn in a special 'got-to-know-somebody-to-go' section. Before she left I reminded her one last time. 

Jacklin Klugman to Show. Here's ten bucks. Which horse?

Jackie Kugelman.

Jacklin Klugman. How much?

Ten dollars.

Which place? 

First.

Third. 

I wrote it on the ten-dollar bill.

The day of the derby my mother was watching to see if she could spot Linda in a crowd of 135,000 spectators.  My dad was in his recliner. He woke up at the sound of the bugle. I was in my room. He yelled down the hall to me.

What was your horse?

Jacklin Klugman.

What place?

To Show.

How much?

Ten bucks.

You'd better come in here.

I watched the final turn to the finish.

Jacklin Klugman paid $4.40 times $10. $44.00 dollars.

These are 1980 dollars.

Linda came home late the next night. She said she had a great time. There was no mention of the $44. 

Ever.

Years later Linda was hosting a Kentucky Derby party. She started talking about her trip. I finally asked her what happened. She said she was going to tell me she lost the ticket or she forgot to place the bet or she picked Jacklin Klugman to Win. The truth was her picks lost all day long.  The only winning ticket she held was mine. 

She and her friend drank it. In 1980, $44 bought a lot of drinks.

If you're looking for a connection to Stumpstone, the fifth-place horse was Rockhill Native.

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

1. “The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.” ~ Lee Iacocca

DAY 21: SGT. ROCK

 At the end of the street where I grew up there was a field. Each Sunday from May until October the Disabled American Veterans hosted a flea market/swap meet in an old barn it rented out for weddings, wakes, whatever. 

One of the dealers sold second-hand comic books. I don't know where he found them but he had thousands. My friends and I would load up our pockets with dimes and we'd march through the field to the comic book guy. While digging through the boxes to find Gold Key Ripley's Believe It or Not Ghosts Stories, we came across Sgt. Rock. He was one bad-ass mofo. 

We got to know the crew. Bulldozer. Little Sure Shot. Corporal Zack with the Bazooka Attack. The stories were exciting. Sometimes we prolonged the suspense by waiting to turn the page. When we did. Hoo boy, what a scene.

My dad was a WWII vet and the comic opened a door for us. He was in the navy so he said he had a different perspective of the war. 

As we grew, Sgt. Rock aged. Then came the day of the final mission. It was said, but fitting.

DAY 21: Sgt. Rock

STUMP STONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls. Amelia Earhart

DAY 20: Driver's Take Your Car

DAY 20: STP

As my nephew and I got older, the atmosphere of the trips to the property began to change. We weren't little kids mesmerized by the folktales of Fort Mackinac twenty minutes away from where we camped. For a long time, there had been the bones of an indigenous person in the basement of one of the historic fort's buildings.  The bones used to freak me out, it was the first full skeleton I had ever seen. After being on display for as long as I could remember, the bones were returned to the descendants of the indigenous people who lived there.

Mike and I took our bicycles north with us. I was supposed to give us some freedom to explore the scope of the community. The roads were gravel. Our bikes weren't cut out for the terrain, especially on hills. The bikes leaned against the tree, useless except for a trip to Mackinac Island.

One year Mike's dad had given him a flatbed go-cart. Red. Small engine on the back. Small wheels. Low clearance. Somehow my dad fit it into the trailer and it went with us. I remember there was an STP Oil sticker on the bed. For some reason, Mike thought that gave the go-cart some class.

We drove the hell out of that thing.

We had it with us at the beach access one day. The woods behind the farthest access had trails. We took turns going off-roading.  At one point I hit a log and flipped the cart. It was the seventies. Helmets? Pffft. Seatbelts? Pishaw! Gigantic bruise on my torso from where the steering wheel struck me? Yep.

My mom had found a piece of chain coral the size of a cantaloupe. She didn't want to walk it back so she put it on the go-cart for Mike to drive it back. The journey was daunting. The rock rubbed over the sticker and the paint chipping both. Mike was not happy. 

My dad later repainted the bed and collected a new STP sticker along with some others. Budweiser. AC Delco. NAAPA. Everything was fine.

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

What are men to rocks and mountains?-- Jane Austen,  Pride and Prejudice 

 

DAY 19: Allemande Left

At the end of each summer, usually the weekend after Labor Day, my family went to a campground hosting a  square dance jamboree. The barn was loaded with urban cowboys and cowgirls. The. older kids were farmed out to babysit the younger kids. I'm not sure where my sisters were. they might have been dancing. I was probably four on this particular trip. The daughter of a backyard neighbor babysat me.

At the time, this campground had no lake. It was in the process of digging a swimming hole. I think the plan was to either truck water, hit a spring, or let snow collect into it over the winter and fill the hole when it melted the way the Great Lakes formed during the last ice age or even longer ago than that.

There were huge piles of stones, at least to a toddler. A bunch of us kids started throwing stones back into the pit trying to fill it with rocks, which was about as likely as melting to snow to fill it. The plan fizzled within minutes.

I do remember the dance caller was a guy named Jerry. I thought he was hilarious. HE was younger than the parents who were doing the dancing. I remember Jerry stopped by our trailer on his way to call the dances. He asked me if I had anything to tell my parents. I told him, 'Yeah. Tell them I pooped my pants just now."

Jerry told them from the stage.

DAY 19: Allemande Left 

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Rock is a great master of life. It teaches us this simple philosophy: Stay firm!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

DAY 18: Jousting Around

 Michigan hosts a rather large Renaissance Festival. For several years it was on my 'to-do- list each fall. Then I had kids and my cosplaying came to a stop. I began to see younger than me guests spending hundreds of minutes and dollars at the various pubs, playing the role I once played. Overnight I became the ancient mystagog no one was interested in hearing speak his wisdom on the importance of saving money or following proper etiquette in social arenas. Now my kids are grown and I might go back and give it try.

One year a group of my college buddies and I went with dates. We took in more shows than we had in the past. Ate a lot. Drank more. I had a woman ask me if I wanted to look into her magic box. I lewdly said, "And how might I do that?" She told me to give her two dollars. I  did. She told me to bend over and look into the hole in her box. While I did, she turned a crank and a little pan chased a damsel through a groves of trees. My date said I could look in her box for free then held up an empty popcorn container to my eyes.

Later we took in a joust. There was nothing simulated about this show. Those guys went full-on at each other. The show momentarily stopped when one of the knights toppled from his horse. It was obvious it was not part of the practiced routine. He stood and raised a fist. We thought it was a fist in triumph and everyone in the stands cheered.

He waved us off and opened his fist. He held a rock.

"This is a stone," he said. "Supposedly David killed Goliath with one. Someone here tried to do the same to me just now. Unlike the giant, I wore a helmet that protected me from this projectile." He dropped the rock to the ground and walked his horse from the field.

The joust show ended.

A week later, a different knight lost his grip on his sword and it impaled a man sitting in the stands in the leg. 

STUMPSTONE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

Use the stones thrown your way as tools, not weapons. --Motivational Poster

DAY 18: Camostone