Tag Archives: death

Swish and spit

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I got a call from my cousin, Leslie.

These days, whenever relatives call, there’s generally some sort of family emergency. This time, Leslie told me our Auntie Elsie died. She was 89 and after a fall breaking her ankle she was moved out of her house and into a rehab center in north Cheyenne.

I stopped in to visit her when I was in town before and noticed she had a banged up face. Cheyenne is a smallish town. Elsie’s roommate is the great aunt of some high school mates of mine. She said Elsie fell out of bed. What I wasn’t told, is that she was now in hospice care because of it.

I was planning another trip to visit her and get a couple bits of family history from her about the time she sprung my grandfather and her brother – my Uncle George – from a holding stall at the Santa Anita Racetrack when Executive Order 9066 was signed by FDR rounding up west coast Japanese – Americans.

Long story short, Japanese who lived in the interior like in Wyoming were viewed as being non-threatening and allowed to stay in their homes and Elsie was able to get them back to Wyoming.

After World War II Elsie chose to move to Boston where she attended dental hygienist school and upon graduation, returned to Cheyenne and worked for Dr. Carson, who ended up being our family dentist.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s going to the dentist was viewed, I think by everyone, as cruel and unusual punishment. Those belt-driven drills that moved the bits at the speed of a hamster spinning his cage were gruesome.

The classic diabolic dentist movie scene is when a Nazi war criminal played by Lawrence Olivier bores into Dustin Hoffman’s front teeth in “Marathon Man”.

I inherited my dad’s bad teeth. I don’t know if kids still get their baby teeth capped, but all my teeth were covered with stainless steel. If there were metal detectors back then, I never would have made it into a sporting event or through the airport.

My aunt the hygienist cleaned my teeth. She always made it fun for kids. This was during the days of cuspidors – those little round sinks with cold water swirling around. I’d get that gritty toothpaste which sort of tasted good squirted out by my aunt pulling the trigger on that high pressure water pistol that shot a straight stream from two feet away.

Then swish and spit.

I always liked the mist that splattered up on my face as the fast moving water sloshed up the ceramic sides of the bowl.

When it was Dr. Carson’s turn, he wasn’t the most personable guy, at least compared to Dr. Cohen, my pediatrician. After a few pleasantries, if I was in for a filling, he pulled out this Dr. Frankenstein contraption. It was a glass, graduated cylinder embraced in a stainless steel housing with a needle the size of a house nail. He would stick it in a bottle of Novocain, pull it out of the robber stopper with a squeak and squirt the air out before jabbing me various places in my mouth.

Elsie would come in and mix up the filling gunk, which consisted of mercury and silver. My mouth was so full of toxins by the time I was out of high school, it would make a tuna fish gag. I gave up my last old school filling when my root canal tooth finally gave way a couple years ago and replaced by a ceramic one. My dentist at the time talked me out of gold, because it would ‘show’.

I shouldn’t have listened.

There’s no wonder dentists are viewed as torturers.

I don’t have to tell anyone who’s experienced those low RPM drills how much more pleasant it is to go to the dentist now and have to submit to those water-cooled hydraulics ones.

When I have dental work done nowadays, I don’t bother with the anesthetic since the needle poke hurts more than the drilling and there’s no biting of the inner cheek because of the weird numbness.

At the end of the session, Auntie Elsie handed me a pencil and a toothbrush and I was on my way.

Dr. Carson’s office was right next to the Bunten Pharmacy on one side and a block away from Save More Drug and Thrifty Drug. While waiting for my ride, I killed time browsing the baseball cards and Beatle cards and waste my money one a pack or two of them.

Elsie was single and in those days, that was unique, but not unusual for my family with three of her brothers never marrying and a brother and sister marrying much later in life.

She lived in south Cheyenne with my grand parents and her brother, Richard. She eventually moved out to her own place. Rich stayed there until both grand parents died and eventually married. More on them later.

Elsie was quite the athlete – playing 2nd base in a competitive softball league and a 175 scratch bowler. When she quit playing, I think I have her glove in my baseball box. My dad gave me my first glove, which I still have. Not a good memory about it though. The neighbor kid, who was much older than any of us threw a ball at me that was catchable.

I was scrawny and my hand and arm weren’t strong enough to keep the ball from flying out of the webbing and into my eye. I think it knocked me out. I ended up going to the emergency room, but I was no worse for the wear.

The glove I used most of my Little League career I bought at a church rummage sale in November 1963. It’s a Rawlings Wally Moon model. It had a broken in pocket and I made many a good play with it. There were a couple fly balls I should have had but flinched when the fence came up on me. Those weren’t major league fences, they were chain link barely waist high with the barbed edges uncovered which aren’t allowed these days.

Elsie taught me how to bowl. Starting out, everyone uses the house balls. The problem was, finding the same or a similar one each time I went to the alley. I didn’t really get the hang of the game, even though my mom and dad were at one time avid bowlers. World War II put an end to that when they were both kicked out of the American Bowling Congress after Pearl Harbor.

Neither of them picked up the sport again after that. Besides, my dad had a bad back which kept him 4F and out of the war. I also inherited his back problems and was introduced to chiropractics and sat out my sophomore year of high school wrestling – a great sport for spindly guys like me.

I think chiropractors had the same macabre reputations as dentists – maybe they still do.

When I started working and had disposable income, Elsie talked me into buying my own ball and shoes. I wasn’t a great bowler because I didn’t spend enough time at it. I did bowl enough to win a bowling trophy while on a team in Lander, Wyoming.

That was a rite of passage.

About that same time “The Big Lebowski” came out. I related to the nerdy Steve Buscemi character, since I didn’t quite fit into the usual bowling crowd.

Bowling has changed. I got rid of my ball in an early purge, which I now regret. There’s no bowling alley in Boulder and the ones in Denver are these disco-like places with flashing lights and loud music.

The worst part is, the score keeping is automatic.

Keeping score with soft lead pencils projected overhead is a lost art form. It was a display of bowling knowledge. I was always lousy at math, but I could score a bowling game. I think I was good at it because it was very visual – marking those x’s and half x’s writing legible numbers. Some people were bad at it. Even if I wasn’t bowling, I liked to keep score.

After Elsie died there was no big to do, I come from a long line of low key die-ers. A few months earlier my cousin Alison called to report her mother – my Auntie Jeannie – had passed away. She had a stroke while sleeping and didn’t wake up. She had a small reception, nothing like some services I’ve attended.

Part II – What a long strange trip it’s been

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Things have been getting better. I’ve been out of rehab for almost almost four weeks and I saw on the news over 4million more people have signed up for Obamacare since I did back at the end of December / beginning of January.

I started to drive last week, which has been liberating. I’m still not quite sure of the clutch foot in my VW van. I’m likely to get an automatic transmission vehicle and have been renting one for a week and getting around pretty well. I’m looking to lease a car.

Meanwhile, the Eurovan started right up after sitting fallow since December 16th. I’m able to push in the clutch and drive it. I have a love – hate relationship with it, though. It’s been nothing but trouble since the day I bought it, but luckily much of the failures were covered by warranty.

There still are some quirky things happening when it starts up. I take it to the garage on Sunday to get it looked at. Who knows when it will be out of the shop. I’ll check on Wednesday.

As for now, the car lease quest is now a waiting game hoping for a better deal. The one in December that I missed was zero down, 24 months $197 for a Ford Focus. The best I’ve been able to find now is zero down, 36 months $239 for a Subaru Legacy sedan.

I digress.

Meanwhile, I figured out that the main reason doctors get sued so much is because healthcare is imprecise at best. Hit and miss guesses based on the best information available at any given moment is the only way to figure out what’s wrong with someone.

Once a doctor and patient weigh the information and with a high probability have figured out what’s happening, the same process is followed for treatment. Patients who aren’t proactive and involved in their health care and rely on docs to make decisions make a huge mistake.

I’ve learned that a person really needs to be a strong advocate for themselves because doctors, nurses and everyone else in the health care environment could give a rat’s ass what’s happening with each individual patient. The squeaky wheel gets the bed pan was my mantra.

I’m still going through ‘dialing in’ process for my treatment. I don’t think I’ll ever be back to where I was before June, 1, 2013 – but who knows?

I’d say the “armchair patients”  who haven’t been in the healthcare system lately and think that modern medicine choices are black and white need to get sick to experience it themselves.

So far, so good on that front.

The things I notice these days, are public places that aren’t universally accessible. I stayed at a bed and breakfast as a break from hotels the other day.

It’s in an historic building and there were two concrete steps to get up to the yard, then four concrete steps to get to the porch. Once inside I had to navigate six stairs to one landing then four more stairs to the second landing.

Whaddya gonna do?

Truckin, Im a goin/ home. whoa whoa baby, back where I belong …

7 Answers About My Life Purpose

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I don’t know if it’s an American thing, but we’re pretty good at coming up with lists. Maybe lists give a sense of order or accomplishment. There’s been a facebook game of tag going around about listing things for which a person is grateful.

 People wrote about their pets or their families or their homes and physical environments – their stuff. As for me, I couldn’t come up with much. I see life as an interconnection of events and encounters with the world around me and not any three things that make me feel grateful.

I ran across an article by a guy named Mark Manson on Ryan Van Duzer’s wall entitled “7 Strange Questions to Help You Find Your Life Purpose.” Since my two-month stint in the hospital and rehab, I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the last few months.

1. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF SHIT SANDWICH AND DOES IT COME WITH AN OLIVE?

Like Woody Allen says in Annie Hall, “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories.The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else.”


From the summer of last year to a couple months ago, I’ve been horrible, I’m thankful that now, I’m just miserable.

2. WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT YOU TODAY THAT WOULD MAKE YOUR 8-YEAR-OLD SELF CRY?

I created some hard feelings towards me by a long time friend of mine about not always being straight forward enough or answering questions or describing situations vaguely. I probably do this out of fear of rejection or fear about being wrong. I have been getting better at speaking my mind, but I don’t think people really are interested in hearing straight answers.

3. WHAT MAKES YOU FORGET TO EAT AND POOP?

I forget to eat from time to time, but I always poop. Writing and editing make me forget to eat. I lost 30 pounds when I was sick and have gained back 20. Even when I forget to eat, I eventually eat even when it is an odd time of the day, usually in the middle of the afternoon. The one thing I advise young people as why they should get a good job, they can eat whenever and whatever and spoil their dinner anytime they want.

4. HOW CAN YOU BETTER EMBARRASS YOURSELF?

As I’ve grown older, I don’t get embarrassed much these days. A couple weeks ago, I started attending yoga classes two or three times a week. I’m a klutz when it comes to the balancing poses, but that doesn’t bother me.  The women in the class make conscious fashion statements with their outfits and yoga accoutrements. I’ve noticed the yoga badge of honor is the worn out yoga mat with lots of toe nail gouges.

5. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD?

I used to think that my participation in various causes would make a difference. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. There’s been quite a bit of controversy about domestic violence and the NFL.

I worked for a domestic violence prevention organization called Project Safeguard, my colleague, also a man completed our MPA degrees at CU Denver in the domestic violence prevention field. While DV is largely a problem of men, the solvency role is largely one reserved for women. It’s been very frustrating bumping up against that ceiling and not being able to do much. One idea I’ve had, but not the energy is to build a group of regular guys – ala the Promise Keepers – to take on the DV issue. Men have to set their own table, not join that of women.

The only people who can have a huge impact are very wealthy people and famous people who can buy change. Everyone else just follows along, It takes regular people like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown to be killed / martyred to raise awareness about issues and create social change. Maybe that’s how it’s always been for oppressed people.

I’ve come to realize that I can only do so much as an individual and hope others choose to do the same. I give $5 to political campaigns in Kentucky wondering if Alison Grimes can take out Mitch McConnell and on recently elected Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and hope I can be a small part of a change movement.  If I ever did anything personally, I imagine it would have to do with a hard-hitting documentary project. The world would be saved by now if we only had more spare time. My last stint in party politics I was the precinct 108 captain for the 2008 election cycle. This was when the Obama ground game was so good. The school was packed to capacity and the caucus oozed out into the hallways.

6. GUN TO YOUR HEAD, IF YOU HAD TO LEAVE THE HOUSE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, WHERE WOULD YOU GO AN D WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

A long time ago I decided that I wanted to see and do things while I was young and spry enough to enjoy and not wait until I was too old. I’m also one who isn’t content just to travel someplace to look at stuff. There’s a Talking Heads album called Stop Making Sense. It’s laid out as a scrapbook and one of the cut lines is “Rich people travel thousands of miles to take pictures of poor people.”

Over the years, I’ve been to all the states multiple times except for only one trip to Hawaii. I spent a month in Uganda a few years back, made pilgrimages to visit the family roots in Japan and Peru. Lived and worked in Mexico for several years.

I’ve experienced quite a few events. Here’s a sampling – saw Mantle and Maris play, traveled to Washington DC and tear gassed during Richard Nixon’s 1973 inauguration and hung around at LBJ’s funeral; had lunch with Timothy Leary; went to one of Bill Clinton’s inaugural balls in 1993, trekked to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees in the 2001 World Series shortly after the 9/11 attack, saw Nebraska get creamed by Miami in the 2000 Rose Bowl NCAA National Championship game, climbed Devil’s Tower a few times, swam with dolphins in the Amazon River.

When I turned 60, I came up with a list of some things to do that year, then I landed in the hospital and didn’t quite get through everything, but the list continues in play. Going to Ecuador was on the list. I also haven’t been to Europe. Any travel would have to be around something unique. Maybe Harry will invite me over the Pond for a drink.

7. IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE ONE YEAR FROM TODAY, WHAT WOULD YOU DO AND HOW WOULD YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?

I’ve thought about this quite a bit lately. The question asks people to project out a year and as such, I don’t think it gets much serious thought and gives an excuse to put off thinking about.

When I went to visit Graceland the first time, I knew Elvis was famous, but I didn’t think he was THAT famous – all those Grammy Awards, clothes, jewels, cars.

Over the years I’ve accumulated stuff thinking it might be of interest to others. Turns out, I mostly have boxes of junk that I’ve been sorting through, trying to sell a few things and giving stuff to charity.

I watched a cable show called Tiny House about people wanting to downsize and live in homes that are a couple hundred sq ft in size. The downsize therapist had the “hoarder” separate things into three piles – trash, recycle /reuse, keep – it’s a pretty good method.

I’ve come to realize that the only people who have any business keeping their stuff are famous people. I’ll pass a few things on to others. My main hobby over the years is collecting autographed baseballs of all the players on particular Yankees teams. The internet took the challenge out of collecting, but I was able to fill out the odd ball items and the collection is largely complete. It’s been tough for me to let go of that stuff.

How do I want to be remembered? I googled myself to see what was out there in cyber space – mostly information that’s five or six years old and about my recent movie and TV business life. Nothing, really, about growing up in Cheyenne, at school at Hastings College, in grad school in Laramie, working in Gillette, and Lander or much about my time in Colorado.

If I were to leave behind a record of my life virtually, it would be my facebook and linkedin accounts. I don’t know if I want my social media life ended.

When Robin Williams died, there was a lot of attention paid to him for a couple weeks and then that story became old news. If a famous guy like Robin Williams fades into the past fairly quickly, I’m pretty sure, about all I’ll get is an obituary in a couple newspapers and someone will have to pay for those, if they get around to it.

I’ve put some thought into my final wishes, though. I want to be cremated and some of my ashes scattered on top of Devil’s Tower – I hope I don’t out live all of my old climbing pals; some scattered over center field in Yankee Stadium – that may be a secret mission. I have a grave plot in Cheyenne, that will then be unused, but I’ll have a headstone that says “Alan O’Hashi 1953 – 20?? ‘Was Supposed to be Buried Here'” or “Who’s buried in Alan O’Hashi’s tomb? Nobody”

WHAT’S MY LIFE PURPOSE?
There’s the material life purpose which has to do with “stuff” and the nature of this little quiz. I have grown frustrated with this because the American Dream is to accumulate and take up space and bigger is better. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that what is better is exactly the opposite. My purpose in life is to do good, do no harm and move away from the material. I sound like a Methodist. Methodists say “Stay in Love with God” but that doesn’t quite roll off my tongue.