Old Settlers’ Picnic II

     “C’mon!” Larry hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me along.

     We ran, but not very far, just around the corner of the grandstand building.  Larry adopted an air of nonchalance and I did my best to imitate him.

       We stood there, leaning against the building, feigning innocence.  We waited.

     Earlier, Larry recruited me.  He must have worked his way through a bunch of other guys and been turned down.  Being three years younger than he was, I was quite a ways down the social totem pole.

     That thought didn’t occur to me then.  I was flattered to be asked to assist.  Why not help Larry?  Because he was doing something stupid?  That thought didn’t occur to me then, either.  Thoughts of consequences never entered my mind—until the time came to face them.

     We watched a man serving homemade ice cream from the crank style ice cream maker.  The scene was another Old Settlers’ Day at Walks Camp Park.  On the backside of the covered grandstand, beneath the higher bleacher seats were booths where vendors could set up and serve a crowd.  The doors to the booths were hinged on top.  When opened, the doors, propped up with rods or sticks, provided a shade for those standing in front of the booth.

     Beneath the lower benches of the grandstand were two crawl spaces, separated by the hallway that ran from the back of the grandstand to the small stage at the very front.  Once in a while, someone would crawl into one of the crawl spaces to retrieve an object that managed to get dropped through the bleacher seats.

     Sheets of corrugated metal ran from top to bottom underneath the bleachers.  The metal served to protect the booths below the dirt from people’s shoes as well as whatever might blow into the mostly open structure.  The metal also channeled water from wind-blown rain or melted snow to the crawl space.

      “Pop!” went the firecracker.  Ladies sitting in the grandstand screamed.  The master of ceremonies was irritated.  This wasn’t the first firecracker set off in the crawl space.  Measures had been taken to prevent such a thing from happening.  Dire punishments had been promised.

     “Let’s have the boys who did that,” the announcer bellowed.  “Let’s get them up here.”

     Larry sauntered off and I followed him as best I could.  The emcee’s appeals to apprehend the miscreants faded, and we reached the safety of the Arikaree Riverbed beneath the cottonwood trees.  There Larry celebrated his mischief.  My own joy was that we got out of there without getting caught.

      Larry needed an accomplice for his naughty deed because the crawl spaces to the grandstand had doors hinged on top, like the booth doors.  Sometimes the trap doors were held open by a hook and eye to provide a little ventilation beneath the seats.  This day, the doors were closed to prevent miscreants from igniting firecrackers in the crawl space. 

     The crawl spaces were attractive nuisances.  They made dandy sound chambers for an explosion.  The explosion never failed to elicit screams from ladies sitting in the stands.  So the doors were closed.

     My job was to hold the door open long enough for Larry to strike a match, light the firecracker fuse, and throw the lit cracker under the grandstand.  I was dumb enough to do it.

     Surely someone saw us do it.  There were people all around.  Why hadn’t someone collared us and taken us up in front of everybody to be disciplined?

           After about thirty minutes or so, we left the shade of the cottonwoods wandered back up to see what was going on.  Things had settled back to normal.  Someone was entertaining the crowd with music of some kind.  The firecracker was history.

      I separated myself from Larry.  I wanted nothing more to do with any of his projects for a while.  I could only imagine what would happen to me if my parents discovered I had been part of that firecracker business.              

       I counted myself lucky that no one “told on us.”  It would take some time for me to figure it out.

     Larry’s father was the Master of Ceremonies that day.  

Old Settler’s Day

     Labor Day was the saddest of all the holidays, when I was a kid.  Leading the charge of morosity was the fact that that holiday marked the end of summer, the end of freedom, the beginning of school.

     Ignore the fact that with the start of school, friends would be reunited, and we would have much more time on the sports fields with three recesses a day than we ever had during the summer.  Freedom is a state of mind.  We were unable to discover that idea as prisoners in the classroom.

     The other thing that happened on Labor Day was the Old Settler’s picnic.  As the name suggested. it was for the folks who had homesteaded in the area during the first decade of the 20^th Century.  In the 1950’s there were still a few of those left, but mostly it was for the descendants of the real settlers. 

      Our Grandfather survived until the end of the sixties.  He certainly qualified to attend the annual celebration, though I don’t remember him ever attending one.  We went to a few of them.

    In my memory, a lady named Lena Martin kept the day alive and spearheaded the event.  When she grew too old to do the job, the tradition quietly passed into history.  No one wanted the job.

      The day was filled with contests of various kinds for every age.  I remember some of the men standing at stations, shotgun at the ready, yelling “Pull!”  A blue rock, or blue rocks, if it were a double, would come flying out of a berm a few yards in front of the shooter.  “Boom!” went the shotgun. The crowd would ooh and ah if the explosion resulted in the blue rock turning into smithereens.  It was sort of an “Oh?” if a chip or two went flying from the rock.  If the blue rock fell and crashed ignominiously to earth where it broke into pieces on the hard old prairie, the crowd groaned.  The shooter had a dead miss.

      It seems the first prize for the shooter who hit the most blue rocks was a turkey, thus the name “turkey shoot”.  I may be confusing this with some other event, however.

      Another contest for men was the nail driving contest.  The contestant got a hammer, and a two-inch board with a big nail, 16 or 20 penny, started in the board.  The object was to set the nail with the least number of hammer blows.

      A couple of guys tried to set the nail with one blow.  The nail always went flying away somewhere.  The contestant was disqualified.  We tried to get Dad to enter this contest, but I don’t think he ever did.     

      There were plenty of contests for kids, sack races, three-legged races, foot races.  I probably tried some of those once or twice, but I soon gave up.  There were two Huffman kids who ran like greased lightning.  If they were entered, there was no sense for me to try.

     I did win a contest at Old Settlers’ Day once, hands down, no questions asked, and it was a source of burning embarrassment.  The picnic was held at Walks Camp Park.  There was a covered grandstand with a softball diamond in front of it.  In the center of the lower level of the grandstand was a stage even with the second row of bleacher seats where a speaker could stand and speak up to the crowd.

      For some reason, I was standing down below the stage.   I think I might have been set up.  The emcee announced the next contest.  Apparently, I didn’t hear what the contest was.  Had I heard, I would have beat feet out of there as fast as I could go.

         Before I could go, a set of great long spidery arms grabbed me, hoisted me over the side rails of the stage and deposited me smack dab in front of the crowd, God and everybody.  The crowd was laughing, applauding, cheering.  I suspect I turned the reddest of reds.

      I looked daggers at Jimmy Lundy.  I always considered him my friend.  Now, he betrayed me.  He was laughing, too.

      The contest?  Who has the most freckles?  There was no need to count spots, no need to look at the competition.  I was awarded first prize by judges, the crowd, everybody.

      I always hated those freckles.  Once I took a washcloth and scrubbed my cheeks until they were quite chapped.  I think there was some Lava soap involved, but the freckles remained.

      We had this Warner Brothers record, Porky Pig on a Safari.  “Ebeelubeelabookala!”  One of the animals he called on more than once was a leopard who was trying to rub away his spots.  I knew what the leopard knew.  On the third visit, there was no leopard.  Only spots on the ground and the washcloth.  The leopard had scrubbed himself away.

      I didn’t go that far.  Dad tried to comfort me.  He said he had two nicknames when he was a kid, “Spots” and “Goose egg.”  He pointed out he no longer had freckles; they would disappear.  No help.  How could anyone like a kid with freckles?  They were ugly!

     It would be many years later when both of my daughters were swooning over a fellow teacher’s son who had a spattering of freckles under his eyes and running across his nose.  Somebody actually liked a person who had freckles?  My own daughters?  Unbelievable!

      There was a reward that infamous Labor Day.  The first prize for the freckles contest was a shoeshine kit.  Some sixty years later, I have lost most of my freckles.  A few light ones mark my hands and arms. 

     But I still have the shoeshine kit.  It was packaged in cardboard with a cellophane window so you could see two dusting/polishing brushes, a black one, a clear one, two applicator brushes, a black one and a brown one, a shining cloth and two cans of Kiwi shoe polish, black and brown.  It all fits into a fake leather case.  The polish cans have been replaced a few times over the years.  The polishing cloth has been replaced.  The original brushes are all still there.  They still polish my leather shoes.

        Looking back, I sense the whole thing was a set up.  I never heard of a freckles contest.  I think Jimmy Lundy made it up, knowing who would win, and picking an appropriate prize.  With friends like that. . . .  Well, it was the right prize,  I guess.

UFO

    Some stories can’t be told.  They haven’t crawled out of the vault containing those stories too painful to share into the realm of amusing.

     On the flip side are the stories that spend little or no time in the painful category.  One such story began on a Friday evening.

     Friday evenings highlight the working person’s week.  With retirement, Friday evening joy has disappeared.  That is partially compensated by Monday morning’s disappearance.

      This particular Friday evening was a late fall evening.  Maybe football season was finished, or it was an out-of-town game.  My presence to either take tickets or run the concession stand was not required.

      I was helping to get supper on the table when the phone rang.  “Let’s go to the movie,” the voice on the phone said.

      “OK!” the Goodwife said.

     “Oh no, please no,” I muttered.  Movie-watching is not my long suit.  Many movies are trite, hackneyed, predictable.   Many times, I pay the price of admission in order to take a nap.

      A lot of Friday evenings, I wanted to get away from everything, to have a little private time away from the noise and bustle.  We had the perfect place for that, on the hill two miles out of town, the nearest neighbor a mile away.  The last thing I wanted to do was go sit in a theater filled with my students and former students.  Not that I disliked them.   I loved them all right.  I just needed a break.

     As the Goodwife hurried about to get supper on the table so we could get to the movie on time, I prevailed upon her to make my excuses to our friends and spare me an unenjoyable evening. Her enthusiasm diminished a little, she hurried through supper, primped a little, threw on her jacket, grabbed purse and keys and headed out the door.

      I earned my reprieve by gathering up soiled dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, scrubbing skillet, pots, and pans, wiping table and counters.  I had already decided that a shower and a book were next on the docket. 

     One of the advantages of living on a hilltop in the country, plains country, was the ability to see everywhere.  Bathrobe and clean underwear in hand, I idled by the south window in the dusk.  It was misty, almost foggy.  Visibility was limited.  But wait, what was that red light in the distance?  I had never seen that before.  Probably an airplane or something.

     Returning from the shower, this time wearing the bathrobe, I checked out the south window again.  The solid, unblinking red light was still there.  It didn’t go away all evening.  I got out the binoculars.  They brought the light closer, but no more details appeared in the cloudy mist.

     A couple of things lurking in the back of my mind came to the forefront.  Late summer, early fall, a family a few miles south, a respected family, the county sheriff’s family reported a UFO sighting in their territory.  Ironically, the other thing that came to mind was a movie I liked, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  “Dah dah dah dah dum.”  The five theme notes flicked through my head.

      I studied the light again.  It appeared to move, but it didn’t go anywhere. 

      I was under standing orders to call Bill any time day or night if I saw either of two events, a tornado, or a UFO.  He wanted to see those things for himself, not just movies or videos of them.

     This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call him immediately.  When the Goodwife’s headlights flahed on the wall, I knew the movie was over.  I picked up the phone and punched the button on the speed dial labeled “Uncle Bill.”

      “Hey Bill, listen, there’s this weird red light up here.”

      “Red lght?”

      “Yes a red light in the sky south of us.”   Click.  He was on his way.  I had exchanged bathrobe for jeans and shirt.  I pointed the phenomenon out to the Goodwife.  She agreed the light had never been there before.  She agreed it was weird hanging there in the midst.

     Bill arrived.  He had seen the light as he came up the road.  We consulted.  He called his wife and ordered her to bring the van pronto.  The other movie-going couple was notified.  Soon six of us were standing in the yard eyeing the red light that none of us had seen before. 

     We all piled in Bill’s van and headed south.  Belonging to the van’s six occupants were eight bachelor’s degrees and four master’s degrees. 

     We didn’t have far to go, four or five miles.  The closer we got, the less the mist and haze interfered with our view. 

     Somewhere about a half mile away from the UFO, we could all see:  the legs and cross braces of the tower.  What had been obscured in the mist, even to the binocular’s scrutiny, was now easily visible in the light’s red glow.

     Bill pulled the van onto the fill that bridged the highway ditch and granted access to the pasture.  We got out and looked.  One doubting Thomas among us slipped the chain on the swinging gate and hurried up the trail for the hundred yards or so to the tower site.  She laid hands on the metal tower rungs and returned to where the other five sat waiting in the van.

    “Yup.  It’s a tower all right.”

     What to do?  There was no question that this adventure would get out. We would be the laughing stock.  It couldn’t be covered up.  It would do no good to swear each other to secrecy.  “Three may keep a secret, if two are dead,” Poor Richard wrote.  Somebody would blab.

      Besides, as the van headed back north, we began to laugh.  The absurdity of it all caught up with us.  It crossed my mind that the blame fell mostly on me.  I sounded the alarm.  But one of the ladies who drove that road twice a day to and from work in Colby confessed that she had not noticed that tower going up.

     Far from covering up our adventure, we all told somebody.  They laughed, we laughed.

     Another acquaintance, when they heard our story, related theirs.  They had gone to Colby in the afternoon, had spent the evening there, dined, shopped, visited friends and headed home in the dark.  They saw the light.  The driver far exceeded the speed limit in the attempt to get there before the UFO departed.  They too saw the tower as they got close enough to clear the mist.  They laughed, too.

     Since that night, we have traveled down that road in the company of our friends several times, going to this meeting or that concert.  It doesn’t happen every time, but every once in a while, somebody will say, “Look, there’s our UFO.”  We laugh.   

      

Thanksgiving 2016

      “Go home, take the cow into your house to live with you,” said the elder.  It was the next-to-last piece advice the elder would give the Chinese peasant.

      In preceding sessions, the elder advised the peasant to take in the dog, the cat, the goat, and the pig, into his house with his wife and three children.  This was a Chinese fable we read in our “reading” book in second grade (I think second grade).  We might have called the peasant a “Chinaman”, but that’s probably politically incorrect, so “peasant” will do for now.

      The fable started with the peasant calling on the wise old elder to ask his advice.  His wife had just brought another child into the world and she was complaining vociferously about the crowded conditions in which they lived.  The peasant didn’t have the wherewithal to build a new house (or maybe he was just “thrifty”).

      Thus the advice to take the animals into the house, starting with the dog.  Each time the peasant returned to seek advice and to explain that the addition of the animal only made his wife complain more, the elder suggested adding another animal, the cat, the goat, etc.     

     When adding the cow to the household made living conditions intolerable, the peasant returned to the elder.  The elder advised him to go home and turn all the animals out of his house, put them back in the barn, sty, etc.

    With the animals gone, the wife set to giving the house a good cleaning.  She did so merrily, exulting in all the room she now had to care for her family.  The peasant returned to the elder once more to report on the change in his wife’s attitude and to praise him for his wisdom.

     I had occasion to think of that fable in the days approaching Thanksgiving.  We hadn’t hosted either the Thanksgiving or the Christmas family gathering for years.  It was about our turn.  I sent out the email inviting family members to our place for Thanksgiving.

      Our family now numbers in the 50’s.  We thought maybe twenty-some or even thirty-some might accept our offer.

     We had 44 positive replies.  With us two hosts, we would have 46 people in our house on Thanksgiving afternoon.

     We debated the logistics.  Two or three turkeys?  Two hams?  Tables and chairs?  Roaster ovens?  Silverware or plastic?

     We decided two turkeys would be plenty, and they were.  Two hams left us with a whole ham left over.  We managed to borrow everything we needed, including our neighbor’s refrigerator.  (He was gone to Pennsylvania.)

     The next challenge was where to put the borrowed tables and chairs.  The answer was to move chairs from the family and living rooms into the bedrooms.  Then there was ample room for tables with 48 chairs.

     The food, all but ham and turkey supplied by the guests, was abundant.

    

     The weather cooperated with temperature in the 50’s.  The kids could play outside, or inside.  The favorite place seemed to be the storeroom in the basement, however.

      For as many people as we had, it did not seem that crowded.  Everybody seemed to be happy.  We even had time for a short jam session at the day’s end.

     Just like in the fable, when everybody left, we were in a big house with lots of room, echoing room.  That’s not to compare any of our guests to the Chinese peasant’s livestock, of course!

     Once the tables and chairs were removed, we took advantage of the empty space to spruce up the floors.

      The furniture back in place, there remains the borrowed items to return.  Then our job will be done.  

Thrift

 Thrift, thrift, Horatio.  The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

      Good ol’ Hamlet cynically excuses his mother for her marrying his uncle in a month after his father’s death.  Her quick marriage was all in the name of economy.  The left over roasts served at the funeral dinner made for good cold cuts at the wedding reception.

     Thus an early reference (by Shakespeare, no less) to the Scandinavian reputation for being tight.  However, I think my own “economy” came more from the non-Scandinavian side of my heritage, from my maternal grandfather. 

     I remember him sitting in the chair by the south doorway, where a disabling stroke landed him.  Within his reach were ashtray, matches, blanket, and a rope-and-pulley device he was supposed to use to rehabilitate his arm that was paralyzed by the stroke. 

     Mostly, he tended his cigar.  One cigar lasted him a long time.  When it went out, he would relight it.  When I visited, he would ask me to reposition his ashtray.  When I got it where he wanted it, he would say, “That’s the stuff, son.”  (That same ashtray still stands in the farmhouse basement.)    

     He would relight and smoke his cigar until it was too short to hold between finger and thumb.  Then, he would stick a toothpick into the butt and smoke it down to a nub.  If you don’t consider the number of matches he used, there wasn’t much waste there.

     I seem to have inherited his thrifty habits.  Someone near and dear to me usually says I am “cheap”, sometimes changing that to “thrifty” when are among lesser-known acquaintances, when she is trying to put a good face on things.

     In my singing hobby, we sometimes are required to download and print copies of music.  (Supposedly, we have paid the fee to make the copies, thus staying within the bounds of copyright laws.)  I always print front and back of the page.  Many other fellows simply print one side, avoiding the hassle of printing front and back, but using twice as many pages.

     Once while rehearsing with my quartet, I shared my copy of the music with a fellow singer.  He turned the page, searched for the continuation from the first page, and realized page two was on the back of page one.  He remarked about the use of both sides of the page.

     In reply, I was tempted to say something about saving a tree for tomorrow.  Instead, I shared with him Grandad’s using a toothpick to get the most out of his cigar.  I explained I was by nature, thrifty.

      At the time, I was still driving the old Dakota pickup with its six feet of glass pack muffler that didn’t do a lot of muffling.  The boys said they always knew when I was coming because they could hear me a mile off.  They gently suggested I should look for a new pickup.

     I protested that the old gal still ran great, even if it was a little loud and looked pretty sad.  Ted said, “Yeah, you have a lot of toothpicks left in your box, don’t you?”

      I laughed heartily.  When you tell someone something, you never know if they are truly listening.  I knew Ted heard my Grandad story and had taken it to heart.

     Yes, I still have a lot of toothpicks in my box. 

     Once, a nun’s siblings noticed how sincerely she had taken her vows of poverty, as her robes were threadbare and patched.  They decided to go together and buy her new clothes.  They were surprised some time later when they found her wearing the same old clothes while the new outfit hung in her closet.  By way of explanation, the sister told her siblings, “Old habits are hard to change.”

      I concur.

      

It Once Was Green

      It once was green.  Now it is peach. 

 

     And egg shell.

      Some of it was green, then peach, and then egg shell.

 

     One of the Munsters (was it Lurch?) showed up above the stairwell.

 

     That is as close as I’ll ever come to drawing a portrait.  It happened because I had to stand the ladder on a stair step and lean it against the wall to get to the peak high above the bottom of the stairway.  I painted a bit below the ladder top on either side.  The Munster revealed himself when I took the ladder away.

      When we were first looking at this house, both girls looked at the green walls in the kitchen-family room and said,” Mom isn’t going to like that.”  Of course, they were right.

     The color change has been under consideration for some time.  A year ago, we were putting on a new roof.  This year’s project was covering up the green monster.  No more will our northwest wall be confused with Fenway’s left field wall.

      The project wasn’t without travail.  The first attempt proved too light, almost white.  Can’t have that.  Back to Home Depot, where the lady darkened it to peach color.  That worked for a while, until we ran out.

     The second gallon turned out a little lighter than the first.  By the end of the first gallon, I had both west walls done and most of the stairwell.  You could see a line between the two gallons.  I repainted a few square feet when the word came down, “Since we have to repaint it. . . .”  Time for a color change.

     This time “we” tried to match the southern kitchen walls.  The Goodwife took a switch plate cover from the south wall and went through the color samples for thirty or forty minutes trying to match colors, without success.  Finally, one of the paint people told her they had this machine which would tell her everything she wanted to know about the paint on that switch plate cover. 

      It turned out to be eggshell.  At my suggestion, she got a small one-cup sample to try on our still-green wall.  At first, it looked too light.  After agonizing in the afternoon sunlight, she finally decided it was a close enough match, in the artificial light.

     Back to Home Depot for a gallon of the stuff.  Soon the last green wall was covered and the now-peach stairwell turned to eggshell.  There remains the touchup to do.  That means putting up the “scaffold”, a 2 X 12 between a stepladder on the landing and a ladder standing on a stair step and leaning against the wall, again.

     Touchup, replace switch plate and outlet covers, reinstall stair handrail and this project will be done.  Well, there is the green curtain for the kitchen window, now no longer usable.

 

CDL

CANCELLATION EFFECTIVE DATE  11/07/2016

“If you fail to regain medically CERTIFIED status the Department will cancel your Commercial Driver License (‘CDL’) on the CANCELLATION EFFECTIVE DATE shown above . . . and it will be unlawful for you to operate any motor vehicle.”

      There were three or four other paragraphs, citing various and sundry laws, but the meat of the letter was in the forgoing sentence.  It certainly caught me by surprise.  My license doesn’t expire until my birthdate 2018.  I have to have a physical every two years to maintain my CDL.

      I have held a CDL ever since the federal law that unified all 50 states’ commercial driver’s license requirements.  Before that, I held a chauffeur’s license. 

      When the federal law went into effect, two things led me to pursue a CDL.  At first, “they” said farmers had to have a CDL to transport anhydrous ammonia and other such hazardous materials, including some pesticides. 

      Second, all those holding a chauffer’s license had only to pass the written portion of the CDL test.  We didn’t have to go through the pre-trip inspection and driving test.  IF we took the written test by the deadline.

      As the deadline approached, farmers flooded their local driver examiners’ offices.  “They” then said that farmers were exempt from the CDL requirements as long as they didn’t transport hazardous materials outside of a hundred mile radius from the farm.

     It was too late.  Many farmers had studied the book and were ready to take the written test.  They probably reasoned the same way I did:  what if requirements changed and down the line, you had to have a CDL?  Then you would have to take the driving test which included the dreaded pre-trip inspection.

      The driving test was dreaded because you had to supply the rig.  There were horror stories of guys taking their trucks in to take the driving test and not getting past the pre-trip inspection because their truck had too many safety violations.  It cost thousands of dollars to get the truck up to par before the applicant even got to demonstrate his driving skill.

      In Kansas, you can renew your license at the county court house.  If you had to take a test, you have to go to a bona fide driver examiner.  The closest to us was in Colby.

     So I joined twenty or thirty other folks standing in line waiting to take the CDL written test before the “grandfathered” deadline for us chauffer’s license holders passed.  In a few hours, I walked out with a little piece of paper that said I now possessed a CDL.  The actual license came in the mail in two or three weeks.

      I renewed that license a few times by taking written tests.  I never had to take a physical exam.  Until I exchanged my Kansas license for a Colorado CDL.   I didn’t have to take a written test.  But I had to pass the “CDOT physical”.

      The physical exam went pretty well until it came to the vision check.  I had to identify three colored dots.  I missed the first one.  It was red and I said green, or maybe vice versa.

     To pass the physical, I had to call on an optometrist who would verify that my vision, in spite of my color blindness, was good enough to qualify for a CDL.  The local optometrist would probably do that for $50.

     I had within the preceding month had my eyes examined at a place in Denver.  I had to revisit that clinic, but the optometrist lady agreed to write a letter for me once she understood what was needed.  Since I was there within sixty days of my original examination, the service was free.

     She wrote and faxed the letter to the clinic where I had taken the physical.  I had to go back to the clinic to get the rest of the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.  The official papers had to go back to the driver's license examiner.  Finally, I was good to go, until 2018, at least so I thought.

     Then in October came this letter.  Somebody probably told me I had to renew the physical in two years, but it didn’t make a very deep impression.

      This time, I knew I would have problems with the eye exam, with myasthenia gravis and all.  I took an eye exam in Ft. Collins.  This time, the optometrist lady would not agree to write my letter.  She said I needed to get that from the ophthalmologist.

       I contacted the ophthalmologist to ask her opinion, is my eyesight good enough to keep my  CDL?  She replied in the affirmative and agreed to write the necessary letter.  She gave me a phone number to call when I got the specific requirements.

     I made the appointment with the clinic in Hugo.  I should have done some investigating.  I later found some places where they only do CDOT physicals, charging less than $100.  Mine cost $250.

      Armed with my ophthalmologic phone number, I entered the clinic and completed the paperwork.  Then came the actual exam.  We started with the eye exam.  I was able to read the rows of letters adequately with either eye and with both eyes, though truthfully, I was using only the left eye when I was supposed to be using both eyes.

     Then came the color test.  “What color is this dot?” asked the examiner as she pointed to the dot in the upper left hand corner of the eye chart.

     “Red.”  She didn’t miss a beat.  She moved her pointer to the upper right corner.

      “This one?”

     “Yellow.”  Of that I was sure.  She moved her pointer to the lower right corner of the chart.

      “This one?”

      “Green.”  The eye exam was done.  I passed the color test!

      It wasn’t until she looked at my medical history that the examiner brought up my eye problem.  When she expressed reservations about passing me because of the myasthenia gravis I whipped out the phone number from my pocket and asked her to contact the ophthalmologist, who was willing to vouch for the accuracy of my eyesight.

       She left the exam room, to contact the ophthalmologist, at least so I thought.  She never came back.  Instead, her understudy came in about ten minutes later and rechecked my blood pressure.  It was too high, 150 / 80, she said.

      Instead of a two-year extension, I got a three-month extension.  I have to go back in January to see if my pressure has receded.  No mention of myasthenia gravis or eyesight, or anything like that  

      Off to the courthouse where the driver examiner practices.  I removed belt, suspenders, cell phone and passed through the metal detector.  In a matter of minutes, my medical certificate was copied and registered.  It was only good till January, the examiner cautioned me.

      This week, the ophthalmologist’s nurse called me to let me know my recent blood tests had all returned with normal readings.  So I asked about the blood pressure.  Could it be caused by the Prednisone?  She didn’t know.  Consult your family physician.

     Rather than go  off on the problem with modern medicine being all the specialists who only know one thing about the body, whose advise and prescriptions may conflict rashly with the advice and prescriptions of other specialists treating that same body, I wondered if she had heard from the CDOT examiners.  I don’t think they had been in communication with each other.

      Suspicion reared its ugly head that the medical bureaucracy, like the government bureaucrats, don’t think they have done their job properly unless they have required you to come back at least twice.

     I thought I had outsmarted them by having the ophthalmologist ready to testify.  But they found another reason to cause a second visit.  I can’t help but wonder if they had been able to “get” me with the vision issue, if they would have brought up the blood pressure issue at all.  I shouldn’t be so cynical.

       Between now and January, I will have to call on the family physician to address the blood pressure issue.  I will return to the clinic and apply for an extension of my CDOT physical.  Whether that is granted or not, I will have to return to the driver license examiner to either register the extension or to convert the CDL to a regular license.  Red tape wins again.

     I should be grateful that someone is making me address the blood pressure problem.  I have been to the ophthalmologist and the endocrinologist in October.  Both took my blood pressure.  Neither mentioned it.  I guess I’ll have to ask why.

      In the meantime, my CDL is still valid--until January.