Get Off My Broken Back by Joseph J. Silver

CHAPTER 16

Though no one wished to admit it, and despite its farms and rural atmosphere Staten Island is the fifth borough of New York City. When living on the Island one never thinks about crowds, parking, lack of fresh air, or any other of the stupid problems that an urban area forces upon its inhabitants.
Once in a great while it became necessary to take that long cooped up ferry ride to Gotham sometimes called Manhattan. The city is made for labor, love, or shopping. The people who crawl so tenaciously all over Manhattan are not interested in wheelchairs or their occupants except only as oddities in the middle of that concrete scenery. Our automobiles attract no attention at all, but create terrible problems for us the second we try to park them in this fair city. Strangely enough, the city that is world famous for its coldness has a warm-hearted police department, which has made an extra concession to us. It has issued special identification tags that allow us to park where no other parking is permitted at all.
It was sort of a corollary to see the joker who had stolen my license become tired of sleeping in the building, and push his Stryker frame out on the patio to spend the night snoring in the cool air under the summer stars. He wasn’t the only one with the urge to get up and go. Two of the surgical residents who had spent some time on the paraplegic service had learned of our Ercoupe, and decided that it didn’t belong to the flying club, but to the hospital. With that thought in mind they approached Walter Vukelic who was our Chairman and keeper of the keys, for the one to the plane. Walter being the frank person that he is adamantly replied to their request, “Nuts! Go fly a kite.” Open warfare broke out with the doctors attacking the club by trying to persuade the hospital authorities that the plane was their responsibility, but their efforts were to no avail. Walt’s tenacity on top of the truth won out, and the doctors had to sett1e for a kite in the end.
Things between the patients didn’t stay quiet too long because soon “Silent Dick” was making noise as per usual. It seems that on the day that it was his turn to receive a KUB X-ray he needed help to be put on the table, so that his behind would not scrape the metal edges as he made his grand swing up. The technician, who happened to be a female, refused to help him. When he asked why; annoyed, she replied, “I can’t I’m pregnant.” He then loudly shouted “Well don’t blame me, I didn’t do it! Get someone to lend a hand.” His words reechoed throughout the hospital that day with the end result being the transfer of the technician to lighter duty. It paid for her to advertise her family secret.
It’s strange how the female animal can let her sex interfere with her work. A nurse of ours who was in an unfamily way and a terribly frustrated old maid walked in one morning just as I was sweating out a bladder infection. Looking at the intravenous fluids going into one arm, and the bottle of blood going into the other, she turned to me and shouted, “Silver I’m going through a change of life, so I don’t want to hear of your damned troubles”, and then walked out. She is one of the reasons why I never say good morning any more.
She wasn’t always that bad despite her frustrations. We had a colored boy on the ward whose favorite amusement was half a gallon jug of “sneaky pete.” Lying on a Stryker frame face down, he would drag his bottle with him until he finally passed out quietly in some forgotten corner. There was no guarantee that he would reach those corners, but his average was very good. It was almost perfect until the morning that he was awakened by the sound of our old maid friend. For parking in the middle of the room, and leaving his jug of wine on the windowsill; the “sneaky pete” went down the drain, and the jug into the garbage can, taking with it the report of his little misdeed.
I took some time out around then for a skin graft operation on my sacrum, and was forced to spend a few weeks lying on my stomach. My weekends at home with the boys had taken a bigger price than I had reckoned on. The healthy stiffs found a better way to ruin their skins. A traveling basketball team was organized out of the nucleus of the hospital unit. Knowing that the summer hotels in certain sections of the Catskill Mountains sometimes called the “Borscht circuit” employed as their recreational councilors college athletes; games were organized against them. As losing any of those games would be ridiculous, the boys spent the summers having a glorious time hopping from one hotel to the next as guests of the managements.
There was also a negative side to this picture, for not all were so enterprising. Adam Bugan, one of the guys who is a little closer to me today than he was then, made it a habit to come in from pass every morning at five minutes to eight. That was exactly five minutes before the charge nurse came to work. Occasionally Adam would slip up and roll in at two or three A.M. That too was overlooked until the morning he rolled in and lit up a five-inch salute, which he threw under the bed of the old geezer who couldn’t watch television without making running comments. Despite the old boy’s mutterings and threats to call the F.B.I and the secret service, all the patients between their laughter insisted to him that he had been dreaming. It’s been years now, but he still won’t admit that they were right. The television arguments stopped for a while when the tube which someone had stolen failed to be replaced.
While we were floating on clouds the Veterans’ Administration and the New York State’s Governor’s office were taking their just steps to pull us down. Stories had always leaked back to Washington about us; especially the tale of how “Silent Dick” had tried to bite Jane Russell’s teats when she stopped by his bedside to make a courtesy call as many Hollywood stars so graciously do. I can’t say that I blame him, but I must admit that it did help prejudice our case at general headquarters as one of the yellow dog rag sheets that New York tolerates printed a picture of the action. It couldn’t have made any worse an impression on the public than a habit of the boys had of scaring new patients and their families by measuring the patients for coffins on the day first day that they arrived. This procedure was usual done by two or three of the boys who went through a great deal of pomp and ceremony with a tape measure to give an impression of authenticity.
It wasn’t too late, but by raising all kinds of hell, and by going to the newspapers we retrenched a bit, and managed to survive as a hospital entity; ceding only half our buildings back to New York State.
Once again we were able to relax and fall back to our dreamy, happy, do-nothing existence. It wasn’t that we wanted to stay idle, for we didn’t, and so we found ways (peacefully that is) to amuse ourselves as occasion forced us to. One worthy addition to this was the Jersey City Rotary Club, which supplied volunteers to show a sixteen-millimeter movie on the ward once a week. It didn’t take long to learn to know these men when one of them asked, “Why is it you fellows don’t project these pictures yourselves?” I simply replied, “It’s against the rules; we might be hurt.” Slightly annoyed he retorted, “But it’s not against the rules for the President of the Colgate Palmolive Peet Company to be hurt.” Quizzically I added, “Who’s the President of the Palmolive Peet Company?” Modestly he retorted, “I am.” I double-checked his answer, and it was the awful truth; he really was. My curt question in no way affected his or his friend’s attitudes towards paraplegics, and the following week they were all back to thread new pictures into their machines.
It was the same old paradox: the volunteers always on the job while the lazy bitches in the kitchen were crying that they had only had but two hands, but you could never prove even that by the rotten service. The only night that they didn’t gripe was when a storm blew out the electric power, and supper had to be served by candlelight. Some of the more optimistic of the fellows claimed that the only reason for their not bitching that evening was that they were afraid of being raped in the darkness. The other half of the gang claimed that the women were silently hoping that they would be. One sarcastic bastard maintained that they had better be satisfied with their dreams, for if anyone ever created temptation it would have to be one of the young and pretty cadet nurses.
The Government’s cadet nursing program was in its dying days, but the boys and girls managed to extract every ounce of pleasure that it afforded. One ingenious paraplegic conceived the idea of the boys in wheelchairs meeting the girls on their feet in softball matches. At first it seemed that being ambulatory made the girls odds on favorites, but the bookies forgot that the blue jeans standing near the bases contained that soft luscious flesh called female.
Jack Gerhardt, who was our star athlete and a rugged pitcher, forgot that he was ever a gentleman, and concentrated on being an athlete when he started to throw the ball. As the soft spheroid flew past home plate the girls screamed and yelled, “You’re throwing it too fast!” Babe Ruth may have been an impressive figure as he stepped up to the plate, but he never made the impression that those little fannies did as the jumped away from the speeding pitches in their tightly clinging trousers.
After a few innings of hilarious ball, the chair’s superior hitting put them way ahead despite their being handicapped in their fielding. The hackneyed saying is “Beware of a woman scorned”, but no one ever mentioned a female who is losing a softball game. What they couldn’t do with their bats, they did with their butts. It was almost a matter of routine for a chair to make a single, but that is where he would start to die. The first base woman began to hold hands with the paraplegics, and when the next ball was hit, the paraplegic at first found his mind at the justice of the peace when he should have been rolling like hell toward second base. The girls made quite a few double plays that way until the boys took a vow to exercise abstinence. I wouldn’t say that the first basewoman was a delicious tomato, but when she found the boys pulling their hands away from her soft lily-white grip she sent in her second line of defense. From then on she ran her fingers through their hair. Some of the guys managed to hold out against that, but when she threw in her final protective line of fire; a gentle massage of the back of the neck combined with a tickling of the ears, one of the males wanted to yell foul to the umpires. He quickly changed his mind when the rest of the gang threatened to kill him by burning him at the stake. A quick caucus, and it was decided to try and win the game on home runs. It was hard to obtain volunteers to hit four baggers, for it meant missing the gentle touches of all the basewomen who had decided to adopt the first basewoman’s idea. A few die-hards were found, and the dignity of the male gender was maintained. Victory was masculine though that evening under the moonlight the girls took their vengeance.
These young ladies may have appeared to us to be experts in the art of body movements, but they were also adept to another aspect of the anatomy; namely dissecting it. Dissecting sounds as too ugly a word to be applied to such cute youngsters as they were, but despite their not being arsenic and old lace-minded old maids their training called for extensive studies of the human anatomy. It was during one of these training sessions when the two of them were alone in the dissecting room and busily hacking away at a terribly helpless cadaver that the one who was acting as assistant discovered that the sink had clogged. She immediately informed her buddy in butchery who, as she playfully hacked away at the unsmiling corpse answered, “Call the plumbers, dopey.”
Still not too deeply concerned, they continued their ghoulish work until finally there was a half-hearted rapping at the door. Without letting it disturb their delicate art craft, they in unison replied, “Come in.” The door opened, and a tall muscular plumber with a chest of tools in one hand started to make a brisk step forward. Before he could complete his tread his eyes caught sight of the two blood smeared lovelies and their disheveled friend. Simultaneously he dropped his tools, let out a horrible scream, and ran like hell for they know not where. It took quite a while for the girls to stop the ache that their laughter had caused in their sides, but they proved one thing that day, and that was that they were conditioned enough to meet the rigors that their chosen profession was to offer them.
Though the girls did sometimes take too much for granted, they weren’t the only mermaids in the sea, or for that matter in the hospital. There were many more around; in fact, cages full of them. I learned of the contents of those cages one windy autumn afternoon as I was being pushed back from the canteen by a grey lady. She had succeeded in pushing me half way up the walk toward our building when a station wagon stopped directly in front of us. No sooner had its motor been turned off when a young luscious amazon of a creature jumped out, and made an attempt at freedom. A matron who appeared more mannish than womanly took up the chase, giving her quarry but a few minutes of liberty.
The fugitive might as well have tried to free herself from King Kong’s wife. The brisk fall wind that was blowing that autumn flipped the young lady’s open coat into the air, and then to my pleasant surprise, and the grey lady’s embarrassment, I discovered that the escapee didn’t believe in being tied down to styles and conventions of society. The nude sideshow didn’t last but a minute, but if it had it would not have mattered, for for some reason or other my red-faced pusher decided that it was time that we made a grand dash back to the sanctity of the paraplegic building. The grey lady was a true feminine gossip, and without my knowing it proceeded to pass the tale of our little adventure on to the nurses. One of them soon passed it on to a patient, and I found myself being questioned by quite a group, which had gathered around me. I then described the assets and liabilities of taking a stroll to the canteen and, with the aid of hand and arm gestures as a descriptive device, made the crowd gape. Some of the boys eventually worked up a safari, and took the long roll down the hill to the canteen in the hope that lightning would strike twice in the same place, but it didn’t. They were really scientific about it, being certain to do all their trekking on windy days, but to no avail.
One of the listeners in that awe-inspired crowd later made me think twice about again sharing a secret. He was a rather fat sloppy individual who found it to be too much of an effort to wash his urine-soaked body. The word was out that I had canned food in my locker. Fatty, wishing to maintain his figure, one evening sent an aide to my room to ask me for a can of sardines. I told the aide that I had none, but to be positive that he would support what I said, I made him search my makeshift pantry. He didn’t want to, but I insisted that it was an absolute necessity for reasons I would explain to him later.
He strolled away to deliver the sad news, and thirty seconds later returned at a gallop. Between puffs and gasping for air he said, “You know what Fatty called you?” I smiled and said, “Yes.” I rattled off as many four-letter adjectives that I could think of without referring to a thesaurus on pornography. “Gee,” he replied, “no wonder you made me look into the locker, but supposing you didn’t make me look what could he have called you then? There ain’t no words left.” with that he wandered back to his duties in sort of a state of synthetic shock. I could hear him muttering to himself “I thought all the crazy people were kept on the other block in the State buildings.”
As for nuts I could tell that Sealskin was about to pull another one of his proverbial tricks out of the bag, but I could not yet be certain whether it was to be played on me or the charge nurse of Building Twenty-seven. “Joe” he said with that eternal look of troublemaker on his face. “Have you seen the sign Julie has put up outside her office?” Miss Roscoe the charge nurse of that building was none too happy about his calling her by her first name, but to add to her frustrations there was nothing that she could do about it. Knowing Sealskin and his perverted love for trouble I didn’t usually bite the furor causing bait that he had given me, but on the particular day I had already made up my mind to visit the canteen, which was in Miss Roscoe’s building.
After going outside and rolling up the long sidewalk I found myself passing through the dressing room, which oddly enough was part of the entrance to her building. I slowed my roll as I noticed a new young thing busily preparing the dressing cart for the evening nurse. Trying to make conversation I remarked, “It’s awfully quiet in here; you haven’t killed off the patients, have you?” With a quick rebuttal she retorted, “No but we Demerol-ized them.” Her play on words almost put me in my place, for I continued on almost forgetting that the subject for Sealskin’s latest antic was on this ward. On my way back from the canteen I spotted the sign of which he had spoken, for it had been to my back as I made my entrance.
On a large b1ackboard in huge letters there read, “Patients not permitted in Nurse’s Office.” That wasn’t a new sign to me, for I had seen many a similar notice on other nurses’ offices, but never one which was quite so ostentatious. Plainly ignoring it I proceeded into the office, and continued my conversation with the young thing who by now had finished her dressing cart chores. Miss Roscoe immediately snapped at me before I could open my mouth and said, “Did you read that sign outside the door?” Meekly I replied, “No, ma’am; you see I can’t read.” She was plainly taken back and on the verge of tears apologetically replied, “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry.” She believes it yet.
Say what you will about Halloran, things could really never be called dull. The permanent number of activities never quite matched Kennedy’s, but if a person had a brain he could work up a pleasant time-killer without the need of hospital supervision. It was on a balmy day in June that I remarked to one of the guys, “Where is all the activity?” His reply was “Activity, Joe? Why don’t you go fly a kite?” I suddenly found myself with a new name. I said “O.K. I can go along with a joke; I will.” Searching out our ward I located Jimmy Conroy, the only member of the paraplegia flying club at Halloran who had a license to fly. Jimmy was an extra soft-hearted person; the type whom if you would ask for a favor would do it for you regardless if it costs him time, trouble, sweat, or money.
I had always wanted to visit the plant in New Bedford, Massachusetts where my brother was a junior executive. Here was an excellent excuse to make the trip by air, and so I gave my problem to Jimmy who assented to making the flight in his usual unconcerned, unthinking manner. The news was out; “Activity Joe” was going on a hand-controlled airplane ride. Everyone else but Joe and Jim knew that the idea was fantastic, and could never possibly come to be.
The mob led by Fatty found itself an amusement goat, and the jibes started to roll in from every bed and Stryker frame on the ward. As the days passed, the crowd grew ever more intolerant, for though we had planned an immediate take-off the weather was on the side of our court jesters. Every morning for a week I had the night nurse awaken me at five thirty A.M. only to have me rear back my head, look out the window, say it’s too cloudy, and fall back onto the pillow asleep.
The usual hackneyed remarks for that highly dignified week were “You’re full of bull,” “you’re not going to fly“ “the airlines can fly; you can if you really want to.” It would have been stupid to argue, so Jim and I let the verbal shrapnel fall consoling ourselves with the usual “Remember the source.” Having been born dogmatic I held out until the weather gave in, but what crazy civilian wants to rise up out of bed at five thirty in the morning? Having once been a good Army man, and wary of my civilian status, I took no chances. My orders to the night nurses were explicit, if on the morning that I was awakened the sun were shining; I was not to be permitted to fall back to sleep.
The girls loved those directions, for there was their opportunity to mutilate me legally. They beat me with pillows, tickled my ribs, and topped it off by dousing my head with a glass of cold water. As I started to yell and cuss, the girls beat a hasty retreat from the room, for they knew that once I was fully awakened I might seek vendetta. I was awake alright, but then my problem had just begun. I had to awaken Jimmy. I slapped him a few times until he said he was awake, and feeling satisfied that he was, I wheeled off to take a shower. Just to be certain before dressing I rolled back to his bed to check, and see how well he was progressing. Jim performed truly to form, and was soundly asleep. Not taking any further chances this time, I made him get into his chair before I agreed to leave. A short breakfast, and we were on our way.
As we threw ourselves onto Jimmy’s convertible, we could see our hecklers staring from the windows with a last minute hope in their hearts that we might “chicken out.” Realizing that the car top impaired their view, Jimmy lowered it. I remarked to Jim that he had done a good thing, for the morning air was fresh and clean, and we could take a full breath of it as we went along. Jimmy replied that perhaps we should take two breaths, for we might be having our last opportunity to do so. With that happy thought in mind we were on our way toward the outer bridge crossing, and on to Linden, New Jersey, and the “sky service” airport.
The people at the field were exceptionally nice even going out of their way to help us in overcoming the task of climbing into the plane which they had taxied to our car to simplify loading. While Jimmy was being helped into the pilot’s side of the cockpit, I phoned my brother in New Bedford to meet us at the airport with wheelchairs since our aircraft was not large enough to carry any. I told him to be prepared to greet us in two hours, which was the exact time our Ercoupe could make the trip in safety, if all went as planned.
Getting into a low wing monoplane was no cinch either, for we had to go through a series of definite motions until we were finally seated in the cockpit. Step one consisted of throwing my legs onto the wing, two: someone stood behind me and raised my torso onto the wing, three: I slid to the fuselage, four: my legs were thrown into the cockpit, five: my body was then lifted up over the side in the hope that my legs didn’t buckle, and my entire frame could slip gently onto the seat.
Having accomplished all this we received our final briefing from the airport owner, which sounded more like a pep talk from a worried father to his only two begotten sons. Once we were able to escape from his caring arms, Jimmy taxied the ship onto the runway, opened the throttle, and believe it only if you see it we were in the air. We soon reached an altitude of one thousand feet when a thought hit me between the eyes. My head is softer there, and so more permeable. We didn’t have any parachutes. I mentioned this to Jimmy, but he failed to respond to my concern.
Leaving the hand controls unattended, and permitting the plane to fend for itself he lit up a cigarette, and went into a dissertation on how the plane was spin proof, stunt proof and a hundred proof. “Besides, he remarked, “paraplegics don’t have any room for them, and secondly, how in the hell could we use them even if we had to? With these happy words tucked into the back of my mind I sat back to enjoy the air view, and fill Jimmy with questions.
My most interesting question was “how the devil do you know where we’re going?” His reply was “It’s simple – all you have to do is orient the map to the compass and the ground. From there on in you look at the map, and compare it to the ground, so as to know where you are.” He claimed that the ground from one thousand feet up would give the eye the same picture as the map did at a few feet. Well, I tried it, and except for the slight differences in color schemes, as the maps were contra seasonal he was fairly close to being correct. It wasn’t that easily done, so from time to time we’d argue about the accuracy of our map reading, but Jimmy, being the old experienced hand, won most of the debates. I think the “wild blue yonder boys” call this antiquated system that we were using “dead reckoning.” Dead reckoning was the idea, but it looked to me like just plain dead, for we were soon up over Long Island Sound. I couldn’t find any viable landmarks on that long stretch of water, and started hoping that the compass was accurate and guiding us north towards New England, and not eastward and out to sea. The compass soon proved itself as we soon found ourselves crossing the Connecticut shoreline.
The time again arrived to test the system, and by aiming the nose of the plane at a prominent point on the ground that coincided to one on the map and then to another, we arrived at what we believed was New Bedford, Massachusetts. Jimmy was dead confident that he was correct, but we couldn’t see any sign on the hanger tops. I tried the radio, but failed to make any contact. Jim stuck to his belief, and said that we were going down. He then ordered me to keep an eye peeled for the green light as we circled the port. We had made about a half bank when I excitedly pointed out the blinking green light to Jim. The field was clear, and we were not violating any traffic pattern, so down we went.
We had dropped to an altitude of about two hundred feet when my peering through the canopy brought me an unpleasant surprise. Right at the edge of the airport, and directly in front of us was a dead as a doornail graveyard. We had to cross over that field of upright stones to reach the runway, which we had chosen for our landing. I crossed my fingers, and hoped that Jimmy did not see it, but if he did that he was at least not superstitious.
Strangely or luckily enough his landing was as good as his ascension, and with my heart still skipping a beat or two, we taxied toward a hanger. We were then met by one of the field men who with arm signals guided us into the parking lot. Wishing to be certain that we parked on good old terra firma, and not some dirty old cloud I quickly pulled down the canopy, and poked my head over the side. Jim was right again, and with that feeling that comes when you know you’ve just survived the impossible my heart returned to its normal cadence. As our host came to within earshot with my tongue in cheek I asked, “Is this New Bedford, Mass.?”
His reply was short and terse: “Of course it is.” (He left of the adjective “stupid.”) With sincere innocence, I added, “Then why don’t you put up a sign?” Again, the tone of his voice implied that I was ignorant, but he answered, “There is, but you came in on the wrong side of the field.” Realizing how low we had sunk in this man’s opinion, I decided that my next question could do nothing better than to arouse him to murder, so I threw it at him. “Mister, we can’t walk. Would you please do us a favor?” I could see that all of his internal pressures were about to cause my host to explode, but with the restraint that could be only demonstrated by an old military man he replied, “O.K. what?”
“Would you please call this number for me and ask for Mr. Silver? Don’t worry, he’s my brother, and an executive in the firm. You won’t have any trouble reaching him. Tell him that we have arrived at the airport, and we are waiting for the wheelchairs.” With the sound of the word wheelchairs, our host softened a bit and began to think that perhaps his seeing two invalids drop out of one thousand feet of nothing wasn’t a fantastic thing after all. He scratched his head and meandered over to the administration building.
His return gait was more confident, for he had a message for our ears that was typical of my brother’s whom I knew didn’t believe me in the first place. “He didn’t expect you so soon, but will be down in fifteen minutes or so to pick you up. He has to first go out and find the chairs.” As the fifteen minutes changed into a half-hour and then to an hour, our host became worried, and decided to ask questions of us, for he was still a disbeliever. His questions were pointed in a needless attempt to break our story. After an hour of futile vituperation, our host noticed that there was a car about to park at the field gate, and when it stopped that two men were struggling with some old-fashioned steel wheelchairs. His brain suddenly became alive, and he immediately ran over to the fence to open the gate. He then told my brother to drive right onto the field, and directly up to the plane.
After the necessary introductions I looked over my motley crew, and decided that my brother’s assistant was more qua1ified for muscle work than my big fat brother as he was a welder, Mike was an office chair warmer. I then proceeded to instruct him as to the proper method of extracting me from the plane, and he promptly complied with less effort then I had anticipated. Our host became completely reconciled to the fact that we were not going to jump out of the plane by ourselves, so to make amends for his earlier coolness jumped up on the left wing, and pulled Jimmy out of the plane. He put Jimmy directly into the car, and I was left sitting in that old rickety wheel chair. It was decided that he had the better idea, and that I should have been loaded the same way. After making quick amends the welder threw the empty chairs into the car trunk, and off we headed to my brother’s home, for what I had hoped would be a full course dinner surrounded by New England hospitality.
Our timing was bad, for when we arrived at the house we were greeted by my niece and nephew who informed us that my sister-in-law had just headed for the airport to take a plane for New York City to do some shopping. She was not scheduled to return until late that night. My brother’s lack of faith in his paralyzed kid brother’s stamina and love for adventure had led him to neglect telling his wife of my little escapade. I was angry enough to split his fat head open, but with healthy people as all that they can see is the wheelchair, and not the brain that it is carrying.
Once inside the house he turned us over to his children, and excused himself claiming that business came before blood. With the kids as host and hostess we scrounged for ourselves. In order to get around the children had to pull the carpets up off the floor and out of the way. The kitchen was wonderful, making me think that the people who built those large New England homes many years ago must have had the foresight to know that some day they would be occupied by wheelchairs. It didn’t take long before fatigue overtook us. We decided to postpone our adventure in favor of a trip to the bedroom for an afternoon nap,
We awakened about four in the afternoon and called the factory to tell my brother to take us to the plant for a quick tour. It had been my intention to stay overnight as the insides of the house were more than convenient to our chairs, but Jimmy was bashful leaving all my coaxing to go to the wind. He then asked me to call the airport, and have the plane fueled and made ready, for when he returned for the takeoff. I rolled into the office, and easily placed the call, but was taken back a little when the voice at the other end of the line asked, “What octane do you want?” Not wishing to reveal my ignorance I asked back, “What octane do you have?” He promptly recited two or three to me making me still more leery, so I asked the girl at the office switchboard to call over the public address system, and ask Jimmy what octane rating was needed. She did just that, and her voice echoed throughout the factory over the roar of its machines. “Jimmy, Joe wants to know what octane you want put in the plane.” I don’t know how badly that message retarded operations in the plant, or what effect it had on production, but it brought Jimmy rolling into the office on the double. We settled for “one hundred octane.”
Having satisfied myself with my visit, and after telling my brother that the plant would probably fall apart from antiquated production methods I asked to be taken back to the house. We arrived just as my sister-in-law who had changed her mind about taking a late plane from the big city was returning from the airport. Jimmy didn’t want to get out of the car claiming that the sun was going down, and we had no time left to waste. He was dogmatic and wouldn’t change his mind. As he was the pilot, I unhappily decided to give in. I did manage to persuade him to remain long enough for my sister-in-law to whip us up some sandwiches and refreshments, which she gave us to sustain ourselves on the trip, back.
With the usual farewells and “come again Joe,” we headed for the airport. Things were a little different this time, as a small delegation of curious people had gathered, for we had suddenly become celebrities of a minor nature. I handed my brother my camera, and asked him to take a few snapshots just to have proof for posterity. We had almost gotten away when unhappily the mechanic from the field came over with the bill for the gasoline. The son of the owner of the plant who had always liked to show that he was a big shot, and free with his father’s company’s money said, “Mike, don’t let them pay for it; use our credit card.” You know the story of the gift horse and his big mouth, so we accepted their offer, thanked them, and off we went just in time to hear one of the men remark, “You’d never get me up in a tiny little thing like that.”
We dipped our wings in salute and headed into the setting sun toward home. It was one of those glorious spring days, and the multi-colored sunset tempted me to shoot some Kodachromes through the plastic-domed canopy as we headed for New York City. I didn’t have enough strength to open the canopy, for our ninety miles per hour air speed also meant that the wind was going by just as quickly. Much to my surprise, when the transparencies came back from the photographer’s, the pictures were clear enough to warrant having prints made.
The return trip somehow never developed the anxiety for me that the original had, for finding New York City is like looking for the haystack after the needle had been taken out. Once we crossed over Gotham it was even a simpler matter for Jimmy to guide us safely back to Linden, New Jersey, though we almost overlooked a dangerous little defect. Jimmy’s stubborn refusal to remain overnight at my brother’s house had put us into a rat race with the setting sun, and the darn thing almost beat us down.
We landed with probably no more than fifteen or twenty minutes of daylight to spare. Mister Myers of Sky Service was roaring mad from worry. He was just about ready to alert the Coast Guard on Long Island Sound when one of his men spotted us. He called us everything he could think of, and then as he helped yank us out of the plane he told us how happy he felt because we had returned safely. With an extra broad grin on our faces we jumped into Jimmy’s car, pulled our chairs behind us, and quietly stole our way to Halloran.
The crowd that had been so curious about the nude nut had been getting an oral ambush all set for the moment we returned. Their attack failed, and we became temporary celebrities with the jibes changing to questions such as “How much did it cost?” “How fast did you fly?” “Were you on a course that was rough?” “How are the girls in New Bedford” and others? One “character” wanted to know if we had any pains while in the air. Surprisingly, we suffered few, and in a final answer we told them that the low air pressure didn’t make our rubber urinals burst, so our pants were still dry. Though someone did suggest that they check the backside of our trousers just to be certain that we hadn’t been frightened. I told him to follow me into my room, for I was tired, and wanted to go to bed. He did as I asked, and I took my clean pants off and threw them at him. He beat a hasty retreat, and we all finally called it a day.
It didn’t take long for the notoriety to die down, but it was just time enough until someone else could be found who might be a subject for their unwanted jeers and cheers. We had a little boy paraplegic who liked to play a guitar and sing hillbilly songs at the top of his voice, and soon he was assigned the job. He wasn’t famous at first, but one day a female aide, who was a novice at the profession and hospital etiquette accidentally yanked off his sheet, leaving him bare-arsed to the world about him. Not being too bright, she lectured him as to how all about the place understood, and that he should not be too embarrassed by the incident. The more she spoke, the more infuriated he became. Fortunately one of the male attendants, who had the presence of mind to know that the situation called for a new sheet, and not a speech, covered him in time to prevent a murder in self-respect. I would have told the victim to go and tell the chaplain, but one of the nurses who sang in the hospital choir told me that the chaplain was always telling her his troubles.
“You’d think he had troubles;” one of the boys who had made an almost miraculous recovery went for a walk that afternoon, and came hobbling back to the hospital all out of breath. In between puffs he related how the girls at one of that state’s school buildings had made a mad dash for him, and that he just by inches barely escaped from being raped. Poor, poor chap; we were all so sympathetic. We would have taken up a collection or something, but right about that time one of the nurses was getting married, so all the five and ten-dollar bills that were loose had gone to her. That was one of the nice things about the boys at Halloran. Any time they were asked to shell out for a worthy cause they never responded with less than a five-dollar bill, and quite often a ten. It was a thing that I was never to see again in any other Veterans’ Administration hospital.
Sometimes we were nearly but not exactly cruel, for it was often difficult to express ourselves or fight back in some of the situations that we were often thrown into. An example of this would be the day that I was having a late lunch while face down on my Stryker frame. An orderly, whom we referred to as “Big Stoop,” came over and threw his cigarette ashes onto my plate. He then proceeded to remove the tray. Using my best vocabulary I cussed him out, and managed to shove the tray from his hands and clearly across the room. He immediately ran to report this misdeed to the ward master. When they both returned I explained that it was too late to get a noon meal when he put the ashes on my dish, and that was why I had acted so angrily. The ward master threw up in his arms, and said no more save to order “Big Stoop” to clean up the mess.
Halloran was basically a friendly place; basically because of the manager who was very likable, though he never expressed it to the boys themselves. He revealed his character to one of the aides who had been assigned to do some chores at his home on the grounds. The aide in turn told us how the manager had instructed him to try and overlook many of the eccentricities that the boys in our buildings so frequently displayed.
Things would have gone along quite well, but the rotten apple barrel story was true there as well as anywhere else. We had one too, and he was a big one. His greatest amusement was the cursing out without provocation of all the female supervisory personnel. The manager called in the police to see if they could remedy the situation, but they in turn refused to touch him without his first signing a formal complaint. While the manager hesitated about making up his mind the police played pool and drank cokes in the ward den room. It was wisely decided that what our wild and wooly boy needed was a psychiatrist not a New York City police escort, so they were dismissed.
A psychiatrist had to be borrowed from the New York State School since our psychiatric department had closed down when the state took back its buildings. The poor fish of a doctor didn’t know what he was in for. Our hero or villain depending on how you looked at it played up every little and minor defect that he could remember about our place. He won over the psychiatrist’s complete sympathy, and made him agree that bureaucrats and sadists were persecuting us poor souls. To polish off the case he called in some of the boys who agreed to anything our fat-mouthed friend could think up. The saddened doctor left practically on the verge of tears, and promised to come back in the evenings to visit with the hospital villain so that he wouldn’t be so lonely. It was hard to hold back the laughter until he was safely out of ear range. It was almost as a paradox when shortly after that incident an elderly couple who worked with the police department in ferreting out crooked gamblers spent an afternoon at the ward teaching the boys how to protect themselves from card sharks. “Silent Dick” could have taught them a thing or two about the confidence game.
There were other sources of amusements for the hoi polloi, and with the coming of cooler weather, football took the place of softball. It didn’t take too many alterations in the rules to adapt the game to the needs of wheelchairs, and we played rain or shine. Of course when it rained we played indoors, but not in the gymnasium itself. There was never a dull moment save when we broke one or two of the ceiling lights with a long pass, and were forced to take a prolonged time out until the mess was cleaned up.
I had just survived one of those games, and crawled back into my frame when two rugged female members of the press walked into the room and asked the boys if we would all care to group between my Stryker and the one on my right for a picture that was to be published in the former New York World Telegram. We gladly did what they asked, but something seemed to be keeping them from taking the picture. When I inquired as to the cause of the delay Margaret Eliot, the reporter, replied that she had chosen one of the pretty nurses to pose with us. As soon as she told us whom she had picked we all started to let out with wailful moans, and threatened to back completely out of the scene.
Luck sometimes being more than fickle suddenly favored us, for in walked one of our good-looking favorites. I called her over, and said to Miss Eliot, “Now here’s the one that you should have chosen” as I put my arm around the nurse. That female photographer with her alert reflexes and nose for news quickly snapped our picture before I could pull my arm away. It was the ideal picture for the human interest page, but the girls were afraid it wouldn’t be cleared by the hospital, and so we were forced to pose for less interesting shots. Before they left, they promised to mail us copies of all the pictures. A week later I received a package from the newspaper in which there was a copy of the sexy shot for each fellow who had posed. A little note from Miss Eliot was included which stated that it was the picture that she tried to clear with the hospital first, but the special services department gave her an emphatic “no” stating that it might give the public on the outside the wrong impression of the Veterans’ Administration hospital system.
The article that was printed in the paper underneath the simpler picture when it appeared gave the reader a summary of our sorrows, opinions, and attitudes toward the world and life. It also gave a general description of each one’s disgust with the fact that despite our being shot full of holes, the world didn’t seem to appreciate it, and was not heading for a peaceful coexistence as the peaceful season approached. As a tribute to the paper’s circulation I know that it was read by many persons, for that very evening our families were swamped with the usual telephone calls from Mrs. So and So saying “Did you see the paper? Your son’s picture is in it.” One woman whom I had never met in my life reversed the trend, and sent me a book along with a box of candy for the boys. Enclosed in her package was this simple inscription on a card: “just a mother”
The holiday season came and went, but not before I found myself again being touched by the spirit. I was sitting in a friend’s car as we queued up for the Staten Island ferry after having spent a quiet weekend at home. A tramp came limping up to us, and asked if we would buy a copy” of the “Hobo News”. He went on to say that he was a sick man, and was trying to make a few cents so that he could get a bath, and make himself presentable before he checked into the hospital. The word hospital touched us both deeply, and without questioning him any further we threw him a quarter saying, “We’ll take two.” With the Christmas spirit still fresh in mind we added, “Keep the change. Thanking us, and blessing us with best wishes for our health, he left. We still had as few minutes waiting time before the ferry arrived, so we promptly started to read our copies. It took about thirty seconds before it dawned on us that we had different editions. We didn’t know whether or not two bits was worth becoming angry over, and kept staring half-heartedly at the papers when my buddy yelled “Why that crooked bastard; we’ve been taken. Look at the dates.” I made a quick glance and found that my copy read July while the second one read August. “Oh well,” he added, “it’s still a Merry Christmas; the line has started to move.”
With the turn of the year life returned to normalcy again, if you can consider any sort of hospital life normal. One of the boys who happened to be a polio victim took a harmless yen to chase the evening nurse during one dull drab evening. I heard her screams for help, and rolled into the office in time to see him pull her onto his lap. I snidely remarked, “What are you screaming about? Johnny doesn’t need any help.” She was about to say something caustic when a cab driver knocked at the open door and said, “Pardon me, did anyone call for a taxi? She stopped her screaming, turned her head, and answered, “Gee I don’t think so.” He doffed his cap, thanked us, and then left. I then remarked, “Now I’m doubly positive that Johnny doesn’t need any help.” I then left, leaving her still in his lap, but in a far more cooperative mood as she failed to continue her screaming.
The winter was uneventful save for one of the boys messing his car up on a tree as he skidded his way around an icy corner going back to the hospital. The fortunate thing about that was that though it ended in tragedy, it didn’t make the headlines. Paraplegics and what they do are not big news in Gotham though if it had happened in one of the other paraplegic centers located near smaller communities, it would have made the editorial columns.
The things that should make the headlines but never do are stories such as the one of the gay blade of a paraplegic who, every time he put on his braces and stood between the parallel bars, so that he could neck with his girl friend, would lose his bowel control, and be regarded as acting in bad taste. He had inadvertently displayed the wrong fact of life, which is not talked about even in pornographic publications. One thing that I will say for that girl is that she had a strong heart, for despite the stink and the knowledge of what caused it, she married the boy.
Sometimes our entertainment came to us in a more legitimate form including big name stars. Garry Moore with the aid of Rosemary Clooney put on a floorshow for us right in the center of the dayroom. The only complaint that we had against it was that it had to stop as all good things do. To add a little spicing to the day’s entertainment pictures of pretty pin-up girls in bathing suits were passed around the ward for all the boys to see. The idea was for the boys to study the photographs and then select one for whom they would cast their votes as “Miss Forget Me Not”. One of the more pretty ones finally took the title, but when she stood at the microphone next to Miss Clooney, she was a dud. Miss Clooney may have been a few years older than our winner, but her poise and grace stole the spotlight despite her being fully clothed.
Constantly plaguing me in the back of my mind was the thought of what had caused my throat condition, and I was always on alert for anything that might resemble a step made by medical science in my direction. I thought that I had one when I picked an article out of a newspaper about a young lad in Syracuse, New York who had his esophagus lifted, but it turned out to be that the same procedure that had been refused to me by Doctor Hughes in Memphis only made interesting to the reader of the tabloids by the fact that it had been done on a young boy. Such gimmicks always pull heartstrings, and sell papers.
Writing about my esophagus and the trouble I went through to put food down, it brings me to the tale of the Italian restaurant which we patronized on Staten Island, and of the of the spaghetti it put out with a capital S. The usual nightly routine was to call the restaurant, jump into my car, and drive out of the south gate of the post past the La Tourette golf course down a hill that was famous for breaking snakes’ backs, and then through a graveyard that was reeking with Staten Island history. Once at the restaurant, it was a simple matter to blow the horn until the proprietor noticed that I had arrived, whereupon he would bring out what I had ordered.
I made one of these routine trips one evening with one of the boys as my companion. He was what we fondly termed a walking quadriplegic by which we mean we had paralysis from the neck down, but of an incomplete nature, leaving him still able to maintain his equilibrium. His walking looked more like bouncing than stepping, and the boys fondly dubbed him “Ding Dong”. He grew a little impatient about our order when we arrived at the restaurant that evening, so he hobbled out of the car and bounced his way into the bar for a can of beer, which he almost lost before he brought it to his seat. He sat next to me slowly sipping it as we continued our wait. I didn’t expect to be delayed too long, and kept the motor running with the lights on. Time went by, but our order failed to appear, and so I started to blast my horn repeatedly in the hope to speed things up. I paid little or no attention to the passing traffic in that quiet section of the Island.
Suddenly, and from what seemed to be nowhere, a police car pulled diagonally in front of us, and two police officers jumped out with drawn pistols. They came toward us one on each side of the car. One of them poked a flashlight into the window on my side, and demanded in the best Hollywood fashion, “What are you two doing here?” My buddy couldn’t say anything, but I slowly managed to spit out “We’re waiting for our spaghetti.” He disbelievingly poked the flashlight closer to my face as I attempted to continue, “You see we can’t walk, and the man is going to bring it out to us.” He was seriously thinking of something like shooting us for lying, and trying to convince him that waiting in the car with the motor running on a dark night didn’t mean anything less than a getaway car for a stickup when out of the restaurant walked the owner with our package. He said, “Good evening officers,” as they jumped out of the way, and sheepishly slid their armor back into their holsters in an attempt to cover their embarrassment. After we had paid the restauranteur, and he left they slowly inched back as one said, “Why didn’t you fellows say you were from the hospital? You see, we didn’t see any wheelchairs. Say, do you know I used to be a patient out there a few years ago?” On he went until the spaghetti grew cold, but we had to listen to him, or the poor fellow would have died from the fear that we would leave with a bad impression of them in our minds. He had to convince us that he was really one of the boys, never realizing when he left that it was his speech that made us mad, and not his cowboy and indian tactics.
Getting back to the hospital gave us that safe feeling again when not too many days later one of the colored boys went on a “sneaky pete” binge, and found himself a pistol complete with bullets to match. He had made out a roster of his close friends on whom he wished to try an experiment in genocide. The total of this list was five, but one of its members to his good fortune was on a weekend pass that night. The aides who discovered this bold desperado informed the nurse who in turn sent out an S.O.S. to the hospital guards. The boys who were on the list received wind of it, and came into my little ward to hide behind a quadriplegic. When I asked why they were parked where they were, the braver of the two meekly replied, “Well, he ain’t gonna shoot Jimmy, so we’re safe.” I, with mischief in my mind, said, “Hell; he’ll shoot over the bed; why don’t you go hide in the private room? They responded with, “Yah, that’s a good idea,” and rolled on the double into it. Once they were both safely inside I rolled over to the doorway, glanced in at the two shaking figures, and smilingly said, “Good now he can’t miss.” They both collided as they made a mad dash to the doorway. I couldn’t stop laughing all night as they could not have known as I had that the aides had manage to wrest the gun from their would-be assailant, and were keeping him in his bed until the guards arrived to confiscate the weapon.
It was a surprise for us to learn who the hero in this case was, for as an aide he was not always top notch. Upon occasion he was known to come to work with a rubber male urinal, which he had filled with whiskey strapped to his leg. He would spend his tour of duty lying on crates in the basement taking sips of the spirits from their container. He claimed, and I’ve never disproved it, that it was a brand new urinal, and that the rubber in no way affected the flavor or aroma of his favorite nectar.
I got into a fight with a fellow one day only to be warned later by all who had been present that he was a sneak who was pushing dope, dirty pictures and was known to pull knives on people. After the fight broke up he remained quiet until he put himself into trouble by cursing out a nurse. When he found that he was about to be politely asked by the doctor to get the hell out he decided that I was his buddy, and the one to whom he should go for help. The only thing that I could suggest to him was that he take his discharge, and try to keep his big mouth shut in the future. His reply was, “You know, I never did think of that. I’m gonna try and see what happens.” I was to meet him a few years later, but he hadn’t learned how to clam up even then though he did find out how to be more discreet with his tongue.
Next to that private room where those two boys had not so bravely hidden was a room, which had been converted to a dark room by the Army for the use of occupational therapy. It was accessible to all, and open both day and night. Upon occasion it came in handy for developing friendships other than pictures. Two cadet nurses who found themselves hungry during one of their off-duty hours one evening wandered up to our building to ask for some soup. They approached me through a buddy of mine who was known for his late hours out, and he suggested that we heat it on the hot plate in the dark room. It wasn’t too much of an effort to find a can opener, and we were in business. Somebody soon shut the door, but around midnight someone else started to rap on it with violence. It was the evening nurse who, with blood in her eye said, “Don’t you jackasses know what time it is? Get those girls the hell out of here.” My buddy, with a most sincere air, answered, “What’s the matter? We’re only making some soup. To which she retorted, “Here, wipe it off your face,” and threw him a towel. We held a powwow, and after ten seconds of debate, discretion ruled, and we decided that it was time to say goodnight.