Grandpa was a teenager in the 1930s

Grandpa said, “I’ll sure be glad when I can get rid of this tired butt…. I just can’t get comfortable, I keep wiggling around this way and that”—he demonstrated, in the wheelchair—“but nothing seems to work.” He was angry. And tired. He hadn’t slept again.

Outside in the parking lot when I arrived I ran into Rosemary leaving. She’d been trying to get his sleep-aid med organized…. “He takes diox[something] at home, and he wanted me to get him some here.” She sighed, frustrated. He assumes if he wants something, it should be given over without question, even if his daughter is not a pharmacist. “Well, the morning nurse was going off, the afternoon one coming on….” Difficulties ensued, but Rosemary eventually discovered that they are already giving him the sleep med. She shook her head and laughed humorlessly. More consultation with Grandpa, and it comes out that, yes, he knows he’s getting the sleep-med; however, the pill and thus the dose is smaller…. He wants his usual pill. But his heart rate is up over the last couple days, and that’s a concern….

“But he can’t see his heart doctor until the 25^th,” Rosemary said, “unless there’s a cancellation, which they’re hoping for, but I called his office and the receptionist told me he’s on vacation till the 25^th…. So now they’re looking for another doctor…” More negotiation about the sleep med ensued, and finally the rehab center agreed to up the dose. “I just told him--he’s in doing therapy--and he seemed relieved. Maybe he’ll relax some now. I think the heart rate could have to do with his anxiety, and that’s at least in part because of the lack of sleep….”

Inside, I sat down in his room and read sections of last Sunday’s paper for the second time, until Grandpa came back from his physical therapy. A woman I hadn’t seen before followed him in; he was using his walker. She helped him sit down in the wheelchair.  He certainly can be curmudgeonly with the staff (but then they can be patronizing), but he always says “thank you” last thing….

We sat across from each other, and he complained a bit about his morning before we moved on to other topics, tsuch as he wildlife in his backyard, the squirrels, for example, and the ducks and geese from the irrigation ditch, their broods of young ones….

He asked me about my motorcycle, which I rode to Idaho twice but the last time in 2001. The subject got him onto relatives in the town of Mojave, who used to ride dirt bikes. He did, too, when he was visiting them regularly forty-some years ago. They also occasionally rode horses out there in the desert, and he told an anecdote about falling off once, when he failed to tighten the saddle girth. “There I was laying on the ground looking up at that horse, and it turned its head and looked down at me…. Like it was thinking,  what are you doing down there?” He struggled to remember all the family names (these from my grandmother’s side), the brother and sister-in-laws, their kids, their kids’ kids…. I helped where I could. “Those Scotts,” he said, “they were torn apart by heart trouble.”

He had the television tuned to the Turner movie channel, and soon our attention drifted to a 1938 film, Men Are Such Fools, with Priscilla Lane and Wayne Morris, a married couple in conflict over her desire to continue working in advertising. According to Wikipedia, Morris  “spanked [Lane] 47 times in a scene for which she declined a double.” They subsequently part, but later Ms. Lane uses Humphrey Bogart, in a minor role as her suitor, to leverage her husband’s jealousy. Re-united at the end, the couple laughs on the wharf as the duped Bogart sails off on a ship to Europe (where he thought he was going with his false paramour).

Grandpa said, “TV came into the picture and it changed everything.” He told about early televisions at his Penney’s store in the 1950s, displayed in a small basement room, and how when he closed the store it was his job to go down and “reset” them. I couldn’t figure out what that meant. He often can’t think of the correct word, sometimes can’t think of any word for what he wants to say, but usually he finds a substitute….

Next a “Vitaphone Musical” short came on, Use Your Imagination, from 1933 with the dancers Hal Le Roy (in the lead as a daydreaming/ tap dancing elevator operator) and Mitzi Mayfair. Highly recommended, especially the scene in which Mitzi is dressed and dances as a barber’s pole.

Grandpa said, “I always liked Westerns best … the shoot-em-ups.” He didn’t want dinner, and he pressed his lunch on me, a ham sandwich still in the mini-frig. But I declined. On the way back to the house I stopped at Panda Express, the third time this week; it turns out that three is the magic number, and I can’t imagine again eating at a Panda Express, not soon anyway and maybe never.