Herbie: 90 years and Brooklyn...

Late last month, my father turned 90. He’s in pretty good health (knock on wood, keyn eyn-hore,  כײן עַיִן הָרָע) though it looks different from his perspective than it does from that of most others. He lives on his own in the same Manhattan apartment he has for nearly 50 years (when it was new), walks several blocks every day to take his water aerobics class, and takes buses and subways to get around, both to doctors and museums and progressive events and occasionally to visit his remaining friends and acquaintances in nursing homes. He sometimes forgets things, but this seems to be not a lot more than most of us, and his analytic mind is sharp. It is harder on him when he flies places, but he still does. (The time two years ago when we both flew to DFW on Christmas Day and had to change planes to different places and a rare snow there meant the SkyTrain was out and the fact that it was Christmas meant no one was driving little carts and he had to walk from B15 to C36 – B to C is over the highway – was a challenge, but he did it fine.)

This is the part that other people see as great. For him, his left knee hurts a lot – he had his right knee replaced many years ago and it didn’t go well, so he never got the other done, and now it is really bad – so he has to count the days between SynVisc® injections. He is sometimes physically unstable. He hates that he forgets things. He sleeps a lot and takes daily naps (sounds good to me!). He never thought he’d make it anywhere near this long. His only brother was killed at 20 in the Spanish Civil War when my father was 14. His father died of cancer at 53. His mother died at 66. MY mother died, also of cancer, at 57. His oldest grandson, my son, committed suicide at 24. And here he is at 90, outliving most everyone of his generation; he just lost his last, and closest, first cousin. He knows people who are older, but most are homebound (or nursing home bound); a couple are still active, but it is rare that they see each other.

A birthday, he would be the first to point out, is just a day, one more. But it is symbolic, and the weekend before this day his children and grandchildren and spouses, none of whom live in New York, came to the city to spend time with him. In order to break up the constant eating, we rented a large van and driver and went to Brooklyn to see where he (and his children, also, in other neighborhoods) had grown up. We started in the south at Nathan’s (Famous) in Coney Island. This was a real high point. Nathan’s hot dogs and French fries are available in some airports around the country, but they taste different in Coney Island. And there are fried clam strips, hard to find anywhere in the Midwest. The clerks were apparently instructed to push Nathan’s “famous” Mac ‘n’ cheese, but none of us remember this from our childhoods as being part of Nathan’s. No, hot dogs (with brown mustard and sauerkraut), fries (the best in the world) and clam strips. And then, on a sunny but chilly day, walking around on the Boardwalk (there is, however, no more “under the Boardwalk” – sorry, Drifters – there was too much crime and drugs happening there), looking at the huge beach, and some of us (younger ones, and certainly not me) going on rides like the Thunderbolt (the roller coaster starts off going straight up vertical!) and the whatever-it-is-called that pendulums you back and forth starting way up in the air (Andy only). More on the carousel.

And finally we retrieved the driver and headed north, to Sheepshead Bay and to where we grew up. The kind of run-down, two family homes we rented an apartment in looking decades shabbier. But, amazingly, Zillow’s rated at about $1.8 million!! Come on! Then up past James Madison HS, my alma mater as well as my mother’s, and I was able to go into the swimming pool where the teams are now the Golden Knights, not the Highwaymen of my youth, and then to Kings Highway (after which the team name) and up to Brooklyn College, where my mother graduated and my father attended for a while. It is nice there; the quad is as I remember it, but there are more buildings to the west (I keep wanting to say south; I have a good sense of direction except when I think of Brooklyn, where I grew up I always think of what is in fact east as north and west as south, probably because the numbered “East” street where we lived ascend to the east.) Hanging around, my sister discovers a yellow parakeet. For real. Hopping around. The bird is catchable, to the entertainment of a little girl, who is worried it will die. We assure her it will not, as we place it in an empty coffee cup with a lid and an airhole, say goodbye to the girl, and the driver takes us was back south again to a Petco where Rita buys a cage and some birdseed. The bird is ravenous.

So we continue back north, through Flatbush, past Midwood and Erasmus high schools, and the old Ebbetts Field, into Crown Heights and then into Bedford-Stuyvesant where my father grew up. We drive past several addresses where he lived (they seem to have moved every six months or so; in the depression the first month was free), some of which buildings are still standing. We stop at the old Boys’ High, where he went, now not a regular high school (and not to be confused with the newer Boys’ and Girls’ high school not too far away).  It is an amazing, huge, castle-like building of gothic proportions. My father says he never saw the south side entrance in his years of going there; he lived to the north, and came in from that direction, or the east entrance. We wander around; across the street on the south side are big row houses, 4 stories plus basement. It is not the best neighborhood, even now, so we wonder what they would cost. Midblock they change to smaller, only 2 stories plus basement. One is for sale, and we look it up on a phone. Nicely renovated, 2200 sf, only $2.8 million. These prices are more than a little shocking for people from Kansas City.

We continue north, into and through Williamsburg, now hip to the north of the el-covered Broadway we are on and still Hasidic (including enclosed sukkahs built on the terraces) south of that street. Finally across the Williamsburg Bridge and back to Manhattan, tired and, on this Saturday afternoon in October so crowded we decide to even forego a stop at Yonah Schimmel for knishes, a major sacrifice, and make it back to his apartment in time for sunset. It was actually a great trip, and this is the consensus of a group of family who hardly ever all agree on what to do and whether it was fun.

And, I think, my father liked it. No matter how well he is doing, he and we know that he is 90, and that the opportunities to do things like this may be limited in the future.

Not too soon, though, we all hope.

Christmas in Tucson

It is colder than you might have thought, or at least might have wanted. When my son arrived almost at midnight on the 22^nd, it was less than 35 degrees; maybe not much colder than what he left in Chicago, but he was hoping for tropical paradise. A couple of days ago we had highs and lows of about 61 and 33 and NYC was 67 and 41. Nonetheless, he hasn’t seen precipitation and there are flurries in Chicago. It was raining a lot last week; it was raining on Sunday and Monday. On Thursday, we went on a hike and it was lovely; no worries about rattlesnakes in the Tucson Mountains when it is this cold.

Our trip was less uneventful; left Friday evening, stayed in Pratt, KS, and headed west and south on US-54. It’s prettier than going on the Interstates, 40 and 25. Somewhere in the construction zone, however, a few miles south of Carrizozo, the driver’s side tire exploded. We must have run over something sharp a while before and it imbedded in it. No shoulder, so Pat steers it carefully down a small embankment onto flat dirt. Shredded. We call AAA and are told 45 minutes, so try to change it, with little luck. It’s been raining here also, and the dirt is soft, and instead of car going up, jack goes down. Raised it some with the help of a piece of flat concrete, enough to get the wheel off, but not the donut spare on. Within about 2 hours, as the sun is beginning to set, the AAA guy arrives with a lever jack, from 50 miles away over the mountain in Ruidoso. We are able to get the tire on, although it is harder since VW (it is a pretty new Jetta Sportwagen Turbodiesel, 40 mpg on the highway + room for the dogs) makes the bolts separate so you have to line up the tire with the holes, instead of just placing it on bolts that stick out. So on our way the hour to Alamogordo, where the Walmart tire place is still open for another 20 minutes and they have exactly one size 225/45/R17 high performance tire. Which is all we need. So we figure out how to reset the tire pressure light, treat ourselves to a nice hotel another hour south in Las Cruces, and head onto Tucson in the morning. And we think about how lucky we are to have money and credit cards in our pockets and what a real disaster such a blowout was when we were young and had nothing.

So we have a relaxing few days, going to the gym in the morning with my father who is spending the winter here, visiting my sister and brother-in-law, and Pat’s sister and nephew. And, of course, having another blowout, right front this time, and right in Tucson. Must have been another piece of metal imbedded. Who knows? We are now swift at tire changing, knowing where all the pieces are and having firmer dirt, and we head to the Firestone place to get our 2^nd tire in 3 days. We’ll pay more attention to that low pressure light…

Anyway, Pat and Herbie, my father, had a good time shopping the 99-cent store in the mall where the Firestone place was, so all was not lost, and  so far the rest of the tires have stayed intact. We’ve visited Nancy’s new place, a double-wide she calls “My Little Palace”, in a 55-and-older mobile home park in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. She is located high, and has put picture windows in the NE facing side looking out over the Catalinas and the whole valley. In addition to the path to the rec center and big swimming pool, there are trails into the desert out her back door. And all for a price, including renovations and restoration, for a fraction of a house in a much less nice area. And, despite the rain and chill, not much worry about tornadoes or hurricanes here!

The dogs like running around the fenced in yard around the little house my father is staying in, owned by and next door to Becky and Bill, though this didn’t stop them from trying to dig their way out in soft dirt, creating a hole that he had to fill with rocks. We see this when we go to pick him up, to try to fix his computer and go to the gym. And the trees, everywhere, but especially in Becky and Bills front yard, which they have walled and landscaped, and have placed several types of feeders, are filled with birds. Hummers, red house finches (such a dull name for such a colorful bird!) and so many others.

We’ve also hiked the Tucson Mountains, and had a gathering at my sister’s for all our old friends, and had dinner with Barry and Joyce, and gone to see the new Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes action flick, and had bunches of meals together, including lunch yesterday with one of my medical students and her parents who live here, lovely people. And picked up a great deal on steaks and fish from a guy with a truck – the bacon-wrapped filets mignon and ahi steaks last night were great. And Adam is here, which is wonderful, and last night we walked the streets of Winterhaven, two blocks away, to see the fantastic Christmas displays they put up. We liked "Occupy Winterhaven", ooh-aahed at the amazing imitation-Bellagio light show, and the dogs ate popcorn off the street. A good time was had by all. If cold.

But Tucson is Tucson, and the mountains are still there, and I am looking out the back doors at the Catalinas and Finger Rock. And, though it has been light for a while, the sun is coming from the east and illuminating it in a direct light almost as beautiful as the reflected red light from the west last evening. The cactuses have survived another night, and today is Christmas Eve. Pat and Nancy will take Sean up to Phoenix to fly to see his father in New Jersey, and then we’ll go see the new American “Girl with the Dragon Tatoo”, and have dinner, if not the traditional Chinese food. Family is good, and so is life.