“Good afternoon,” Charlie said in a
pleasant voice after opening his door.
I
was still steamed about an incident that happened the day before and I let him
know about it — again! “Charlie, YOU SCARED ME!”
“What
happened?” I know you wanna know.
In
order to tell you what happened, I have to tell you what led up to it.
Lamar!
That handsome, kind, mild-mannered neighbor of mine, that’s what! Lamar is what
happened! Last week, at the top of four porch steps down to a large, flat stone
landing, Lamar stood tossing a ball for Tux to chase when he flung himself off
the porch. He never hit a step on his way down and landed on his right shoulder
blade. I like how their daughter Jenn describes it. “Picture something like Fred
Flintstone with his fingers stuck in a bowling ball, or a really short Superman
flight.”
“I
rolled over to my hands and knees and yelled, ‘HELP! HELP!’” Lamar told me.
Rosie was in the
kitchen and heard him. “I went out and helped him get up and into the house and
to his chair.”
Lamar thought
he’d be okay and didn’t want to go to the ER. “Every time we go there, we end
up waiting six or seven hours to be seen,” Rosie said. But Lamar wasn’t okay. By
that night the pain was really bad. The next day Rosie took him to the chiropractor
because it takes too long to get in to see the doctor. The chiropractor
wouldn’t touch him without an x-ray. They called the doctor for an order for an
x-ray and Rosie took him to Towanda Hospital. Lamar thought he might’ve broken
his shoulder, but he didn’t. He fractured six ribs!
“What’s the
difference between cracked ribs and fractured?” you ask.
Good question. I
asked Copilot, my AI buddy. “Cracked ribs is a term commonly used to describe a
less severe break, where the bone is cracked but not completely broken.
Fractured ribs is a term that can refer to any type of break in the rib,
whether it's a crack, a partial break, or a complete break.”
Needless to say,
Lamar is laid up for a while and can’t get their mail or Charlie’s mail for
him. Mike and I quickly stepped in and took over mail duty.
Charlie is hard
of hearing. I ring the doorbell and wait. Usually, within a minute or two, I’ll
hear him moving around. If I don’t, I ring the doorbell again or I’ll ring the
old, school bell that rings on the porch above his kitchen door. He says he can
hear that one inside the house, too. Sometimes he’s napping and doesn’t hear
the bells. That’s when I’ll call his phone. He’ll hear that and wake up.
This week, I can
hear something inside the house running as I approach the door. A vacuum
sweeper maybe? I rang the inside bell and waited. The machine didn’t turn off
and I couldn’t hear Charlie coming to the door. I rang the inside doorbell
again and leaned on the school bell for good
measure. His slowness in answering is not unusual. I wait and listen and look
around.
I ring both bells
again and wait. Still no Charlie. I’d think he was napping but whatever machine
that was running was still running. I call his phone. It rings and rings. No
answer. Mike and the girls are on the golf cart waiting for me to deliver
Charlie’s mail to him.
“Mike,” I called.
“Something’s wrong! Charlie isn’t answering and I can hear something running in
the house.”
Mike and I go to
another door. The inside door is open and the screen door was fastened with a
piece of wire. I could open it enough to yell, “CHARLIE!” through the crack.
Still no Charlie
— but I heard a new sound — someone was hitting something metallic with
something metallic! “CHARLIE! CHARLIE!” I call through the crack with renewed
panic. I’ve seen enough movies to know that when someone’s in trouble, they
pick up a wrench and beat on the walls of the ship. I was envisioning Charlie
falling or having some kind of episode while he’s running the sweeper. I just
couldn’t figure out what he was beating on or what he was beating with or why
he couldn’t answer me. But those answer would come when we got inside.
I tried to use a
stick to flip the wire from the hook but it wasn’t budging. I yelled,
“CHARLIE!” and this time a rap, rap, rap, was immediately returned,
almost like he was answering my call. I didn’t feel like there was a lot of
time to waste. We pulled on the handle and the door came open. I was afraid of
what I’d find inside but in I went.
I quickly scan
the living room. No body in the reclined recliner. No body on the living room
floor.
The machine sound
was coming from the kitchen. I turned the corner and there stood Charlie. He
wasn’t laying on the floor. He was standing at the counter; an electric grinder
was running. Charlie used the spoon in his hand to move the contents away from
where it was piling up under the grinder and rapping the spoon on the side of
the pan.
“CHARLIE!” I
yelled, but now I’m not panicked. He was wearing over-the-ear hearing
protection, earmuffs, and couldn’t hear me. I stepped closer, cupping my hands
around my mouth, and yelled again. This time he heard me.
“Coming!” he said
and turned toward the kitchen door (which was the opposite way from where I was
coming in.)
“CHARLIE! I’M
OVER HERE!”
“Huh?” he says,
turns around and sees me.
“How did you get
in?” he asked after he shut the grinder off and took off his hearing
protection.
“I pulled the
door open,” I told him.
“I thought that
was secure.”
I’m standing
there thinking, that is beside the point. “CHARLIE!” I exclaimed. “YOU
SCARED ME!” His face was blank. “You didn’t answer the doorbell. You didn’t
answer the phone. And you didn’t answer when I was knocking and yelling in the
door!”
“I’m sorry,” he
said. “I thought that door was secure.”
I tried again.
“Charlie, it’s a good thing I could get in! I thought you needed help.”
I gave him his
mail and left.
The next day,
when Charlie opened his door to my doorbell ringing, he pleasantly said, “Good
afternoon.”
“CHARLIE! YOU
SCARED ME! You need to give me or Lamar a key so we can get in if you’re ever
in trouble.”
“Do you know how
old I am?” he asked.
“Ninety-eight,” I
guess.
“Ninety-nine,” he
says. “But most people don’t agree with the way I count age.”
Charlie counts
from the moment of conception and adds nine months to his age. Lamar figures
that he’s closer to ninety-seven.
I stood there and
snapped photo after photo of this wizened old face as Charlie once again told
me the story of his two guardian angels, Gabriele and Gabriela.
“Look at me!” Charlie
says. “I don’t go to the doctors. I don’t take any medicine. But I’m ready to
go! I hope I go tonight!”
I looked over to
where Mike was waiting on the cart with Bondi and Raini. He could hear the
conversation and was grinning at me. I know what he was thinking. “Better you
than me.”
Charlie can talk — and
talk and talk. You don’t like to be rude, but sometimes you just gotta walk
away from him.
“In other words,” Mike said when I got back to
the cart. “He doesn’t want any help.”
Charlie is reluctant to give anyone a
key to his house. I guess it doesn’t matter in the long run. If I think he
needs help, or Lamar thinks he needs help, we can always break a window.
The Kipp girls
have been sending their dad get well boxes full of treats. One of the things
Jenn sent was a Superman cape. “No more flights without this!” she advises.
While
visiting with the Kipps, Rosie got to love on Bondi and Raini played with Tux.
Lamar was holding Tux’s leash and I was holding Raini’s leash as they danced
playfully around each other, tails wagging. I don’t know what happened but I
knew something was happening. Raini got very still, her tail and hackles up as
Tux sniffed her ear. That was it. Raini lit into him. But I was ready and held
her back. Tux, to his good credit, backed off. I pulled a chair from the table
near where we were standing and put it between them. When I could see nothing
else was going to happen, I opened the door and told Raini, “Go outside.” She
did, and sat there looking at me through the glass of the storm door.
“I don’t know what she was upset
about,” I told Lamar. “But I could see she was getting upset.” If I had known it
was going to go that far I would’ve sent her outside sooner.
“It’s okay, Raini,” Lamar spoke to her
through the door. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I’m really glad they weren’t upset
about the episode.
Speaking of being upset about an
episode...
“Charlie again?” you ask.
No, no, no. Something different this
time.
Mike had a yen for some good Mexican
food. We tried a couple of places in Tunkhannock and they were okay. We found a
Mexican place in Vestal, New York.
“All that way just for food,” Mike
says.
“I’m okay with a road trip,” I told
him. So we went.
Can you say, “Road pictures!”
A temporary traffic signal.
When we got the green light
and went around the curve, we could see a new bridge was under construction.
We
were behind a semi that had a single smokestack. “I don’t know why they would
do it that way,” Mike mused. “To save money? It would be cheaper to use one
instead of two. But it looks dumb.”
“Does it affect the engine?” I
wondered.
“I
don’t know,” Mike admitted.
“What
happened to that place?”
“A fire maybe?” Mike guessed.
On
the way home, seeing it from the other side, we could tell that it was indeed a
fire.
When
is a stone house not a stone house?
When it’s stone veneer.
We
found the Mexican place with no problem at all. We were there ahead of the
lunch crowd and got a table right away. As we sat there the place filled up and
people had to wait.
Mike got a build-your-own platter and
I got chicken fajitas. They never give you enough tortillas so I ordered extra.
Mike got water and it was a cup of coffee for me. I expected to have to wait
for my coffee, I never dreamed it would be ready, but it was. She came back out
in just a few minutes with our drinks and the coffee was surprisingly good. I’m
guessing I’m not the first customer to order coffee or one of the help drinks
it, too.
The
food was good, but the best Mexican we ever had was at a little place my sister
Patti took us to when we spent a winter out there in Arizona.
We
got our bill. Stapled to the front of the ticket was a printed calculator
receipt. It looked official and I glanced at the bottom line on the way to the
cashier. Forty-four and change!
I was shocked and
did a quick tally in my head. Twelve for Mike’s, eleven for mine. That’s
twenty-three. Three dollars each for coffee and extra tortillas. Twenty-three
and six is twenty-nine. “There’s something wrong with this,” I told the
cashier.
He
held out his hand for the ticket. “I do it here,” he said in broken English and
punched the numbers in the cash register. With tax and a small fee for using a
credit card, it came to thirty-one and some change. He didn’t seem surprised
nor did he apologize. I paid and we left.
“Do
you think they’re cheating people?” I asked Mike. “How many people would just
pay it?” After all, machines aren’t wrong — unless they’re programed to be.
We
won’t be going back to that place.
I
took pictures on the way home, too.
An old spring.
There
didn’t use to be a fence between these neighbors. Then there was one fence.
Then we didn’t go that way for a few years and now there’s a second, taller
fence beside the old fence.
“Man,
they’re really feuding about something.” I said. I remembered once a long time
ago, a neighbor tried to use the backside of our fence. Mike didn’t like that
at all. “They can get their own fence,” echoed in my memory. Out loud I said, “This
is my fence! Get your own!”
“There
isn’t any room to perform routine maintenance between them,” Mike said.
I
wonder what they’re fighting about.
Two
more quick stories, a few pictures, and we’ll wrap it up for this week.
I’ve
been running a ladies’ exercise class at the church for months now. I leave Robinson
Road, go up the hill, not very far, and turn onto Benjamin Road.
One
morning this past week, I get out to the main road and see water on the road. It
didn’t rain at my house, I’m thinking. No traffic in sight, I make my turn.
It’s wet the whole way up the hill. Maybe a water truck left his valve open,
I’m thinking.
With no rhyme or reason, my thoughts turn to kittens. I love
kittens and always watch the roadside for abandoned animals. Then I remember
that Lamar and Rosie were walking one day and a kitten heard them and started
crying from the field. Lamar found it, picked it up, and gave it to one of the other
neighbors. I’m thinking and wishing someone would drop kittens off at my house
— not that I condone abandoning critters like that but people do it all the
time. But I’m guessing they can’t drop them off right at my house because
someone might see them do it and so they have to leave them between houses
hoping the kittens will find their way to a nearby house. The next thing I know,
I’ve driven right past my turnoff onto Benjamin Road. I take my foot off the
gas, think about hitting the brakes, check for cars behind me, consider backing
up the few feet I’d gone past — but only fleetingly — ultimately deciding it
was better and safer to go to the next road and turn around.
Sigh.
Remember
the last time we visited? I told you I couldn’t use the kitchen door because Spitfire
was napping in front of it?
“We
do the same thing,” Miss Rosie confided after she read my letter blog. “We can’t
disturb them either.”
Well,
this week, Spitfire saved me from having to do a load of laundry! It was only a
one-day reprieve though.
Let’s end with a few pictures I took
on the way to the recycling station.
Let’s
call this one done!
Done!
