Uncomfortable Places I Have Slept

 

US 1 Somewhere Between Maryland and Virginia

            I was on my way south, or it might have been north, but as usual I was on my way somewhere. I settled down for the night along a little-visited rest stop. Normally, I’d have slept in my car, but I was getting tired of that. It didn’t seem likely to rain that night and it was warm—probably late spring, early summer—and I preferred to sleep outdoors when I could. I took my sleeping bag to the furthest part of the stop and, just in case, rolled atop the picnic table.

            Aside from my bag, which was top shelf or toppest shelf as I could afford, I was dressed in some lightweight clothes, I slept without a pillow back then, priding myself that I could do that. If I really needed something under my head, I’d crook my arm under some rolled up clothes.

            It was a noneventful night until around two or three in the morning. A few drops hit me, waking me and sending me under the picnic table. The rain wasn’t much and didn’t last long. I crooked my arm under my head for comfort against the gravel under the table. Can’t say I lost much sleep, despite my squirreling around the rest of the morning avoiding the few drops coming through. The next morning, after wiping down in the rest room and a breakfast from the vending machine, I took off.

But to quote the sainted Arlo Guthrie, “That’s not what I came to tell you about.”.

The following year I had a job at a health food store. It was a good job. After three months I earned insurance and used it to access a local doctor for my semiannual checkup. I rarely stayed in one place long enough to use the perks I received from my occasional gigs, so the few times I could I made certain I checked for health issues.

The doctor was thorough and gave me a clean bill of health. When we were done she asked, “Is there anything else?”

I said, “You know, I’ve always had a hearing problem but lately it’s been worse. I feel like I’m listening underwater.”

She said, “How long has this been?”

“Well, like I say, it’s been all my life but, yeah, it’s been getting worse the last few months, Five or six, maybe.”

“Let’s take a look.”

I sat on a stool and she checked my responses to a couple whispers and snaps and then said, “Well, you’re definitely on the spectrum for hearing loss. Let’s look inside to see if there’s anything physical.”

My left ear was first. There was nothing there except for some wax that she dug out, and then she started on my right ear. After a few minutes she said, “There’s a large accumulation of wax in this ear, a lot more than the other. Is this the ear where you have a harder time hearing?”

“Yeah, if I turn my left toward whatever I’m trying to hear I can usually hear better.”

“Let’s see if we can clear out this wax.” She used a tiny spoon-shaped probe and went at the obstruction. At first her digging was gentle, deft, probing at the edges. After a while, she said, “This is a really good-sized ball of wax.” She started using the probe like a pry bar, looking to pop the ball out. I began to feel the probe against the sides of my outer ear and then inside the auditory canal.

She asked, “Am I hurting you?”

I said, “A little.” In truth, I had started to feel like she was jabbing at the ball using the probe like an ice pick. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but I was very aware of its presence shape.

            “Okay, I’m going to inject some warm water into your ear canal, see if we can melt some of that wax.” She stepped over and came back with a ball syringe she filled with some warm tap water. “You know, sometimes an insect flies into people’s ears and get stuck in the hair in there and then wax forms over it. That might be what you have here.”

            “Huh.” She placed a small white towel on my shoulder and against my ear and began pumping the warm water into my ear. The warmth felt good. I felt the trickle around the obstruction and back up into my lobe and then into the towel.

            “There, that’s doing it. We just do this nice and slow, we can get this out.”

            She applied the water a while longer. I snuck a peek at the clock on the wall to my left. I hadn’t paid attention to when she’d started but my appointment had been for 1 and now it was nearly 10 past 2. I looked again and it was a quarter past.

            Seemed like the second hand was moving very slowly and she was filling up the syringe now for the 6^th time. Finally, she said, “This is a really stubborn bug. Let me get something else.” She stepped away again to a closet and came back with a small Water Pik-looking thing with a long tube attached to a tank. She switched on something and while we waited for the water in the tank to warm up she said, “I can direct the flow and the pressure with this. We’ll get whatever it is out.”

            She began at the edges and worked her way around and around. I could feel the trickle turn to a pulse. After a few moments, she said, “Oh yeah, here we go. It’s coming out like butter.”

            As she said it, I could feel the faster pulse moving over and around the obstruction. A few more moments and it would be free.

            And then she said, “Oh, my god.”

            That is absolutely not the phrase you want to hear your doctor say while examining you..

            She said, “It’s not an insect.” I’m sure her hesitation wasn’t more than a moment but it seemed like I waited an hour.

            I said, “What is it?”

            She said, “It’s a pebble.” She set down the probe-thing and took a pair of tweezers out of her pocket with which she gingerly plucked the obstruction out of my ear. It was covered in places with what looked like wax. But it was absolutely a bit of gravel.           

She placed the gravel in my hand and when I got back to where I was living, I put it in an empty film canister. This is how I have a visual aid to show I have rocks in my head.

my superhero identity

Barring introduction by aliens or an industrial accident, the superhero whose special powers I could replicate is Mystery Men's The Shoveler. With the exception of one very big plot done with a Bobcat, all the gardens at the two homes we've owned have been created by me with my trusty yellow-handled spade bought in the mid-90s for $20. In our gardening ventures, my wife is the brains, I am the strong back.

Most recently, we've decided to make an above-ground garden, previously devoted to flowers, a vegetable garden. This required my not only weeding it but digging up the black plastic we had laid under the soil years ago (possibly a decade ago). It took a little over a week and a half; after I started and got half-way done, it rained for nearly a solid week, which made weeding easier but tugging the plastic loose harder.

It began as a load of soil mistakenly dumped in the backyard instead of on the garden we'd already dug, and to quote the sainted Arlo Guthrie, "instead of bringing that pile up we threw ours down." We had a number of railroad ties that propped it up and dozens of bricks to hold them in place until they were solid. It's served us well in the ensuing years, and St. Francis has watched over it peacefully. But with only a few exceptions, you can't eat flowers, and we're ready to make it more utilitarian.

my pete seeger story

Like every hippie on the east coast I have my Pete Seeger story. Back in the late 80s I worked at a health food store in Woodstock. There were a number of old personalities that flitted around the place often enough to become nodding acquaintances if not friends. Ed Sanders was one. Arlo Guthrie was another.

One day as I was working the register Arlo came in with an older gentleman, although he must have only been in his late 60s at the time. They bought a couple coffees--we were renowned locally in that age before coffee shops for our organic coffee--and were in the middle of conversation. But both had the grace to acknowledge me when they got to the register. Pete gave me that dazzling smile he always had and Arlo grinned.

I said, "That coffee's especially good today." Pete said, "Oh?" I said, "I made it myself. Nature's magic." Arlo said, "This is, um, Bob, in'tit?" I said yes and reached over to shake Pete's hand. It was gnarled and big and warm.

I said, "Actually, Pete, we met once before." He said, "Oh? Oh sure, you were on the sloop, weren't you?"

He meant his sloop, the Clearwater. I had, indeed, done a day's volunteer turn on it.

I nodded and he said, "A few years out now, wasn't it?" "About two," I said. Pete said, "You know, no one thought we would do much of anything with that old boat but with a little belief and hope we made a difference. Remember that, Bob. You can always make a difference."

He said a few more things but I don't remember much what they were. And I'm greatly condensing what I've written above. Arlo said a few things in there, too.

None of that is important. Here's what makes it a Pete Seeger story. I've met considerably fewer people in half the lifetime Pete lived and I can't keep straight someone I've met a few days ago from someone I met decades ago. Pete didn't remember me. Thousands, tens of thousands, of guys who looked like me and who didn't shuffled across the Clearwater's deck. It was no great prognostication in that town where someone wearing tie dye was probably concerned about the environment and that close to the Hudson River who suggested he'd met the most famous local environmentalist before had probably done so on the deck of his ship. But for a moment Pete made me believe I'd made an impression on him, that he'd remembered me, and that I was important enough to impart a little wisdom to.

But most tellingly, it was true that I was important enough for him to interrupt his conversation with his friend and spend a minute and a half talking with. That, even more than the nickel's worth of advice he gave me, is what I took from him. That everybody, even the guy you were giving fifty cents to for coffee, had an innate dignity deserving acknowledgement. A smile. A few words. A handshake and a chuckle. That's a lesson I like to think I pass on to everyone I meet. That they're worth my time.