Rain and chill today, and I understand it was ninety degrees in Minnesota….. I spent the afternoon at a Starbuck’s using their wifi in exchange for buying a cup of tea.
Later, I visited Grandpa at the rehab center. When I walked into the room he was sitting in his wheelchair going through the top drawer of the night stand. He’s already made progress towards creating a home away from home junk drawer…. And I had brought more requested material: a selection of nail files from the nightstand in his bedroom, as well as a pair of screwdrivers and a couple crescent wrenches. “No pliers, I guess,” he said to himself.
I asked about the tools, wondering what he could have in mind in that plain room. “Well, I need to do some work on this chair,” he said, patting an arm rest.
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. He put the tools away and closed the drawer, then gestured at the electric razor on the bed. “I was going to shave,” he said, rubbing his two-days beard. “So they don’t come in and hire me away as Santa Claus.”
He asked what I’d been doing, and I said writing, and he asked if I’d used the computer in his office at the house. I had, briefly. It’s an ancient Compaq, but he does have a high speed connection. It works for email but any sort of video is a stretch. He never uses it, and he was glad I had put it on, to air it out.
The computer got us on to the subject of technology more generally, then change, and then the past. “People don’t realize,” he said, “the past is gone and it’s never coming back.” Maybe not, but it remains a significant source of material for him…. He somehow got to planes and his flying days, first in the Air Force, then after the war at small airfields in Idaho. He described doing a controlled dive, to work on his skills. "That machine would start spinning, and that was something, the ground rushing at you.... But you'd get it under control and pull out..... I liked best to go up in the mornings, when the air was fresh and all that...." He paused, then laughed. "But that take-off over to Caldwell .... For some reason they had this stand of trees growing just at the end of the runway there.... Not over to the right, not over there to the left"--he gestured--"but right in the middle, and if you didn't get it just right, you'd be taking the leaves off.... I remember looking out the window at those branches and thinking, too close."
“My brother, Jimmy, he had his own plane." He told a story about how Jimmy had flipped it, while landing in a storm. “He was only just scraped up, nothing serious, but he never did fly again. Wouldn't do it..... Instead he started in with those little planes, what do you call them, you stand on the ground and make them fly all over? He seemed to like those."
Rosemary called on the room phone, but Grandpa couldn’t hear her very well. He kept pushing buttons, focusing on those for “tone” and “boost,” but he couldn’t get the performance he was looking for. He said, “This is some sort of psychic phone.” Then, “Now I can’t hear you….” He jabbed at the phone keyboard. “Ok, I got you back but I could hope for better…. I don’t know why they can’t just have a regular phone. Not all these buttons, just one tone and that one loud. That’s how they used to be.”
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