The hearing test

Receptionist: Thank you for calling Hearing Aids Are Us, how can I help you?

T.D.: I’d like to schedule an appointment.

Receptionist: Are you a new patient?

T.D.: Yes. 

Receptionist: What’s your first name?

T.D.: Thomas.

Receptionist: And your last name?

T.D.: Dryden. That’s D-R-Y-D-E-N.

Receptionist: You said Bryban, right?

T.D.: No, not bry, dry. As in, “The desert is dry.” D as in Delta, R as in Roy and Y as in Yellow. 

Receptionist: OK, got it. Dryban.

T.D.: No! Not ban, den. A place where lions live. That’s D as in Delta, E as in Edward and N as in Nancy.

Receptionist: OK Mr. Den.  Got it. 

T.D.: No, no, no, my last name is Dry-den, D-R-Y-D-E-N. Ever heard of the Canadian hockey goalie Ken Dryden? 

Receptionist: No.

T.D.: How about the English poet, John Dryden?

Receptionist:  I’m not familiar with him either but I got it — Thomas D-R-Y-D-E-N. Let me check to see when I can get you in. 

T.D.: No rush, I haven’t been able to hear anything for years. I can wait.

Receptionist: There’s an appointment available July eighth at 1 at our Bonita office. Would that be convenient?

T.D.: Wow, yes. That’s fast service! Thank you.

Receptionist: OK, let me get some more information while I have you on the phone. What’s your date of birth?

T.D.: November 17, 1951.

Receptionist: September did you say?

T.D.: I said November. 

Receptionist:  You don’t have to raise your voice. 

T.D.: I’m sorry but this is frustrating. I'll admit I can’t hear squat  — that’s why I’m calling — but there’s nothing wrong with my speech. Do you wear the hearing aids your company sells? If so, maybe I should go elsewhere. 

Receptionist: No, my hearing is fine. What day and year did you say?

T.D.: November 17, 1951. 

Receptionist (talking to herself as she is typing into her computer): November seventh, nineteen fifty-one. 

T.D.:  Not the seventh, November seven-teenth! Is Alan Funt filming this conversation? Is this some sort of joke? If so, it’s a cruel one, making fun of deaf people.

Receptionist: Who’s Alan Funt?

T.D.: Never mind. 

Receptionist:  OK Thomas, we’ll see you tomorrow, July eighth at 1 pm. 

T.D.: Uh, wait a minute, I’m looking at my calendar and today’s the sixth. Tomorrow is the seventh, not the eighth. Is my appointment on Wednesday the seventh or Thursday the eighth?

Receptionist: The eighth. 

T.D.: Thanks for clarifying that. 

Receptionist: That’s what I just said. 

T.D.: Yes, but you said Wednesday and the eighth is Thursday. 

Receptionist: OK, we’ll see you in our Bonita office tomorrow July (unintelligible) at 1 pm. Thanks for calling.

My brother's birthday

Christmas 1958. 

From left: My sister Judy, mom and me, Jerry 

with his six-month old daughter, Ellen, and dad 

 

Today, for the first time in my adult life, I won’t be calling my brother Jerry on his birthday. 

One year ago today I hung up the phone after my annual birthday call to him and wept. He sounded awful. I told my wife, when she tried to console me, that I had lost my brother. Jerry somehow managed to hang on until January 20th. 

Ours was not a conventional brotherly relationship. Jerry was 16 years older. Conventional brothers serve as best man or groomsman at each other’s weddings. I was the ring bearer at his. 

We were opposite in just about every way two people who share the same DNA can possibly be. Jerry intuitively knew how to repair or build almost anything. For example, he installed a skylight in his house. I can’t drive a nail. Jerry was athletic. I’m a klutz. Jerry was a Master Gardener. I breathe on a plant and it dies. Jerry spent 20 years as an Army officer, then 20 more working in a tech job for a defense contractor. I went into advertising and promotion. Jerry was Viking blond. My hair is was dark brown. He had boundless energy and was always laser-focused on a project or two or three. I’d rather read a book. 

And our personalities couldn’t have been more different. Jerry was a glass-half-full kinda guy; I'm a glass-half-empty. Jerry was invariably positive, upbeat, and never complained, even when he lost the ability to do the things he loved, like attending his beloved Cincinnati Reds home games and working in his yard. 

His wife, Nancy, wrote in Jerry’s obituary that he had a “sunny disposition.” Can you imagine living with  someone for 63 years, and being able to say that and mean it? 

I asked my wife if she could ever write that I had a sunny disposition. “God, no,” she replied firmly.

  

Jerry had a lightening-fast wit. Years ago he and Nancy were dining at a restaurant that featured colonial food and waitstaff dressed in revolutionary-era clothes. When the waitress asked “Are you ready for your aspic?", he replied, “No, a regular toothpick will do.” 

When Jerry, Nancy, my sister and I were going through our mother’s things after her death, I found a sheet of paper folded between the pages of her Bible. It was a poem about a mother with three children who repeatedly asked them to help her with tasks around the house — sweeping, cleaning, shoveling snow, etc. Two of the children always came up with excuses but one always said yes. “Reminds me of Jerry,” mom had written. My sister and I didn’t take offense because we knew she was right. 

Jerry always came through for mom, especially after our father died young. He was the steadiest, most sensible of her children, the one she turned to when she needed advice. When, in her eighties, she was told she needed open heart surgery, she refused to listen to my sister and me when we begged her to have it. She said she had lived a long life and would rather die than subject herself to the pain and commit to the rehabilitation that would be required. But when Jerry insisted, she changed her mind. Once she was released from the hospital, he moved into her house for six weeks and, like the soldier he was, made her do her physical therapy. She complained bitterly but lived another 15 years. 

As adults, my brother and I lived hundreds of miles — sometimes oceans — apart. We only talked on our birthdays and occasionally at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We also saw each other at family get-togethers in Missouri, and my youngest son attended college in Ohio near his home, and my wife and I would stay with Jerry and Nancy when we went to visit him. I wish I had told him how much I admired and respected him and how proud I was of his service to our country and to our family. Men have trouble talking openly about their feelings lest we appear weak, which Jerry most definitely wasn't and I never wanted him to think I was, either. I should have told him that he, more than anyone in our family, influenced me by his example, and that I always wished I was more like him. But I never did.  

My first memory is of Jerry. One hot summer night when he was home from college — I must have been two or three — there was a thunderstorm and I woke up terrified. Our parents’ bedroom was downstairs. His and mine were on the second floor. I ran down the hall, climbed into his bed, and felt comforted, knowing he was there and would keep me safe. 

I have never lost that feeling and never will. 

Aunt Evie's Outhouse And The Flood of '41

A few days ago, while going through a box of family keepsakes that had been buried for years in the back of a closet, I ran across the above photo of my father’s store in Davis, Missouri, taken sometime in the mid-1930s. 

I grew up listening to stories about that store, the first of two my father would own in tiny Missouri towns, but had never seen a picture of it. I don’t believe anyone in the family knew the photo existed; otherwise it would have been framed and proudly displayed. I have it because it was in a box of mementos dug out from the crawl space under the staircase in my mother's house where it had resided for decades.  My brother, sister and I found the box ten years ago as we were preparing mom's house for an estate sale. I took it home to Connecticut, moved it to Florida and stashed it away but always knew it was there. I had been intending to go through that box for years. 

The photo pictures (from left) my grandfather Gilbert Dryden, my father Bud (also a Gilbert), and my grandmother, Virgie. Knowing my family, it was almost definitely taken on a Sunday. Grandpa ran his own general store in High Hill, about 30 miles to the Southwest, and Sunday was the only day both stores were closed. I'm also certain the picture was taken by dad's sister, Emily, the only member of our family to own a camera back then. My mother, Ruby, must have been in the house next door, cooking Sunday dinner. Otherwise she would have been in it, too. 

In this era of big box stores, Dryden's General Store looks right out of a Steinbeck novel but it was, as the photo proves, real. 

This morning I decided I'd share the photo on my blog and write a bit about the store and Davis. Then I remembered I had already written the story I wanted to tell, back in the summer of 2000 for my weekly newspaper column in Connecticut. I entitled it:

Aunt Evie's Outhouse And The Flood of '41

On a recent visit to Missouri, I drove my 87-year-old mother, Ruby, halfway across the state to Davis, the tiny town to which she and my father had moved in 1933. She hadn’t been back in 20 years. Ruby said she had been thinking about Davis a lot for the last few months, as she has been writing her memoirs, which she intends to present to her children and grandchildren for Christmas, on her Mac computer.

Because I write for a living, Ruby showed me the first draft of what she had written and asked my opinion. I told her the truth. It was good work.

And it was clear to me as I read that, despite all the hardships she described during her 11 years in Davis, those years were the happiest of her life.

When we arrived in Davis, we found that not only had the town changed, it was gone. 

Though seven or eight buildings were still standing, not a soul was living there. Apparently the flood of 1993 that devastated much of the Midwest killed Davis once and for all.

Truth be told there wasn’t much to Davis to begin with. At its peak, it had a population of only 100 or so. Ruby said that on the day she arrived, the train tracks were being taken up by a railroad crew — hardly a good sign.

My parents were newlyweds when they moved to Davis. Like most young people caught up in the vortex of the Great Depression, they had high hopes, but no money and no prospects. My grandfather bought the store for them and paid $500 for it.

Theirs was the only store in town, and for miles around. The newlyweds moved into a house next door, so the young wife could bring meals she prepared on a wood-burning stove to her husband, who kept his store open 14 hours a day

Davis didn’t have electricity. Nor was there indoor plumbing, residents had to use outhouses, built behind their homes.

As we drove toward Davis, Ruby told me the story of Aunt Evie, a devout elderly woman who, one night while entertaining the minister, looked out her window to see her outhouse in flames. The minister had excused himself to use the facilities, but had decided to sneak a smoke, which he failed to properly extinguish. Evie’s outhouse burned to the ground. 

Shortly thereafter, during the flood of 1941 that inundated the entire town, her replacement outhouse was carried away. 

“I don’t think the good Lord intends for me to have one,” Evie told people in all seriousness.

Ruby was in high spirits, and told many other stories about Davis during our two-hour drive. I had heard many of them before, but they are always entertaining.

“I want to take pictures so I can scan them into my memoirs,” she announced suddenly, as we were halfway there. We pulled into a truck stop and bought a disposable camera.

I had only been to Davis once before. My parents (thank you, God) had left in 1944, years before I was born. Remembering my one visit when I was 10 or so, I knew it was unlikely there would be much to see or that Ruby would find anyone she knew. But neither of us had any idea the town would be gone.

Davis is nestled in a valley. We arrived from the west, descending the steep hill to which Ruby said she had fled in the middle of the night with my brother Jerry during the ’41 flood. My father, she said, stayed behind to try and save the store, and was found on its roof the next day by rescuers in a rowboat. She directed me to the store.

We pulled up in front of a pile of corrugated tin and lumber that had once been the store, but which had been bulldozed sometime in the last few years, probably after the ’93 flood. Next to the store where the house was supposed to be — the house in which she had lived and loved and given birth to two of her three children — there was nothing. Only the well from which she used to draw water.

“Oh my,” she exclaimed, gasping for air as old people with iffy hearts do when they are startled. “It’s gone. Even the sidewalk your father poured between the house and the store. It’s all … gone.”

My eyes saw a pile of rubble in the center of a weed-covered lot. But hers, I could tell, saw a store with farmers on the porch playing checkers, a strong young husband working inside, a house with a fence, and tow-headed toddlers riding tricycles on a sidewalk.

I opened the car door and asked if she wanted to get out and follow me. “No,” she said, softly but firmly.

I walked to the pile of rubble, hoping to find something — anything — I  might take back to the car and present to her, something she would recognize. But there was nothing.

When I turned around, Ruby had gotten out of the car, and was standing in the road. Her eyes were misty, her chin was quivering.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“I don’t want any pictures after all,” she said.

We drove slowly out of town, past the empty lots where she said the Baptist and Christian churches had stood and past the abandoned houses of long-deceased people she thought of as family because they were to her, a young bride stuck in the middle of nowhere, far from home. 

We crossed over the Cuivre River. “That’s where I brought our bedsprings to clean the mud out of them after the flood,” she said.

Ruby was quiet, and didn’t look back as the car climbed the steep hill and left Davis with its vacant houses behind forever.

As soon as the town was out of sight, she was herself again, talking about the new sofa she plans to buy, how she’s teaching herself Microsoft Word for Mac, and how she is looking forward to attending her granddaughter’s college graduation in New York next spring, if her heart holds out.

She said she will be sure to bring the camera and maybe we can use it then.

Lessons my TV mothers taught me

 This column was originally published May 12, 2000 in the Wilton (Connecticut) Villager and I posted it on this blog for Mother's Day, 2012.  My mother didn't raise me to be lazy, but I am, so here it is again.  Enjoy. And Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there.

I am the product of many mothers.

My biological mother to this day introduces me as her "baby" and apologizes for not having breast-fed me, as she did my older siblings. For some reason breast-feeding was important to the women in her family.

Her own grandmother, who had 12 children, was so enamored of breast-feeding that she continued to nurse her youngest, Luther, long past the time she should have stopped. When Luther was six, the sheriff came around to inquire why the child wasn't enrolled in school, and found him being breast-fed on the front porch, both of his feet planted firmly on the floor, as his mother rocked back and forth in a chair, smoking a corncob pipe. "He ain't old enough," his mother informed the sheriff.

My mother taught me to love reading, travel, cooking and Scrabble.

Then there were my TV mothers -- mothers with sons roughly my age -- on the shows I watched faithfully. Growing up with my nose pressed to the boob tube, I learned almost as much from those mothers as I did from my own.

One of my favorites was Timmy's mom, played by June Lockhart, on Lassie, which I watched every Sunday night.

Timmy's mother, Ruth, lived on a desert ranch with her husband, son, and, of course, Lassie, who was smarter than all of them rolled together. Though their home was little more than a shack, Timmy's mother always wore high heels.

As a child, I wondered why Ruth would raise Timmy in such a godforsaken place, which had tumbleweeds everywhere, abandoned wells to fall into, wild cougars, etc.

As an adult, I think I've figured it out. She had kidnapped Timmy from his real parents, and was hiding out where nobody could find them.

Ruth gave Timmy carte blanche to explore the canyons and rattlesnake-infested gullies of the area, secure in the knowledge that if he fell in a well, Lassie would sound the alarm.

From Ruth, I learned that good mothers give their children rope with plenty of slack to explore the world, and let them figure out for themselves how to get out of any wells they fall into.

Her suburban counterpart was June Cleaver, mother of Beaver and Wally on Leave It To Beaver. June, too, always wore heels, but rarely left her kitchen. Unlike Ruth, June was overly protective of her children and smothered them with so many questions after school as they ate her freshly-baked cookies that you just knew they must hate her and would never visit once they left the nest.

June couldn't cope with her boys and would wait until her husband, Ward, came home so he could deal with their troubled, dim-witted son, Beaver. "Ward, something's bothering the Beaver," she would announce ominously as he came through the door.

I suspect that while Ward talked it over with Beaver, June went to the kitchen and drank directly from a bottle of Smirnoff to dull the pain she must have felt from wearing heels all day on a linoleum floor, not to mention the disappointment of giving birth to a loser son like Beaver.

From June I learned that a mother -- even one who makes cookies from scratch instead of buying Nabisco -- shouldn't be afraid to deal with her kids' problems herself, something poor June refused to do.

In the early '70s, I was intrigued by John Boy's mother on The Waltons. Like me, John Boy was a college student studying to be a writer. Though she had six or seven kids, Olivia Walton clearly preferred John Boy to the others. To her, John Boy could do no wrong and she would always drop whatever she was doing to talk over his problems with him even if her other children needed her attention.

"Mama, mama, Jim Bob's cut his arm off at the sawmill."

"Shut up, can't you see I'm talking with my favorite, John Boy?"

From Olivia, I learned that some mothers have favorites. Every kid likes to hope he is the favorite but, if that's the case, his mother should at least try to hide it, unlike John Boy's.

In the '80s, I spent Friday nights with my rich mom, Miss Ellie, of Dallas. Miss Ellie insisted that her two adult sons and their wives live with her in the same house and share every meal.

Miss Ellie was invariably gracious to her slut of a daughter-in-law, Sue Ellen, who would return home every so often in an alcoholic stupor after a week away in the arms of various lovers. Sue Ellen acted this way to get back at her husband, J.R., who had girlfriends stashed all over town. Not surprisingly, the relationship between J.R. and Sue Ellen was volatile.

Surely Miss Ellie wanted to say something but always bit her lip and let them work it out. An inspirational example for mothers-in-law everywhere. When my sons bring their future wives home to live with us, I'm going to make sure my wife gives them their privacy, just as Miss Ellie did.

My current favorite TV mom is the feisty Olivia Soprano of HBO's The Sopranos. Last season Livia tried to have her middle-aged son, Tony, bumped off by the mob.

From Mrs. Soprano, I've learned that even a mother's supposedly boundless love has its limits and that every mother, ultimately, has an invisible line in the sand her child crosses at his own peril.

As so, as we prepare to celebrate Mother's Day, I would like to extend special greetings across the miles not only to my own mother, whose failure to breast-feed me has ruined my life, but to each of my boob-tube mothers on whose examples I was weaned.

Thank you, Moms. You've made me the man I am today.

The car salesman

Car salesman to me, as I am looking inside an SUV parked on the showroom floor: Beautiful, isn't it? 

TD: It is, but I'm looking for a sedan. A J-55 specifically.  I don’t see one here on the floor. Do you have any outside on the lot?

Salesman: I don’t know. I’m new here, I’m not allowed to sell cars, only to show them.

TD: Well, that’s all I want today -- to see a J-55. I’ve read the reviews and they sound great.

Salesman: I’ll go in the back room and get the keys to one. 

TD: OK.

Salesman, returning five minutes later: We don’t have any J-75s. 

TD: I didn't say J-75, I said J-55.

Salesman: Sorry, I’m still learning the differences between the models. It’s confusing. I’ll get the keys. 

TD: I’ll wait. 

Salesman (10 minutes later): I found the key to a blue one with tan interior. It’s parked outside. 

TD: Great, that’s the combination I’d want. Let’s go see it. 

Salesman, 3 minutes later, pressing the key fob and opening the door: Here we go, an X-55. 

TD: This is an SUV. I want to see a J-55. A J-55s’s a sedan, not an SUV. 

Salesman: Oh. I guess I just heard the 55 part. I’ll go back and get the key to one.

TD (pointing to a car across the lot): Isn’t that a J-55 over there?

Salesman: If you say so.

TD: It is. 

Salesman: Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.

TD: OK. 

(Salesman goes back in the showroom and emerges 5 minutes later, looking sheepish.)

Salesman: Uh, this one's a demo. Boss says we can’t sell it. 

TD: All I want is to look inside, sit behind the driver’s seat and get a feel for it. Can't I at least I sit in that one?

Salesman: Oh, OK. In that case, I’ll get the key. Can I grab you a bottle of water while I’m inside?  This dealership has bottles with their own label. 

TD: No thanks.

Salesman: You sure I can’t get you one? It’s hot out here. Summer’s coming for sure. 

TD: No, I just want to see the inside of a J-55. That’s J as is Jim, dash five five. 

(Salesman returns ten minutes later) 

Salesman: I’m sorry, but this one’s sold, someone’s coming to pick it up tomorrow morning. 

TD: That's fine, but did you get the key? 

Salesman: Uh, no. When the boss said it was sold, I ...

TD:  I’m going to take off. Thanks for your time.

Salesman: No, don’t leave. I’ll run back and get the key. Gimme a minute.

TD: OK.

(Five minutes later.)

Salesman:  Here we go. 

(He presses the key fob and opens the door.)

So, what do you think?

TD: I don’t know yet. Let me sit behind the wheel.

Salesman: These are the safest cars in the world.

TD: I know, I’ve owned three.

Salesman: Only one person has ever been killed driving one and that’s because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.  

TD: I don’t believe that. Of the millions of these cars that’ve been sold around the world in the last 50 years, only one person has ever died in an accident?

Salesman: That’s what I heard.

TD: Seems far-fetched.

Salesman: What do you think?

TD: The interior’s beautiful. And I love this dashboard, it’s one big computer, like a jet plane cockpit. Are you sure you don’t have a J-55 in that lot off to the side over there? I see dozens of cars. Surely one of them’s a J-55 I could take for a test drive, no? 

Salesman:  So now you want to go for a test drive? I thought you just wanted to look inside.

TD:  I did. And because I liked what I saw, I’d like to drive one if you have one available. Not far, maybe a mile or two. Just to see how it handles.

Salesman:  So, if you’re buying one today. I’ll have to get my manager for that. I can’t sell, just show. 

TD: I didn’t say I was buying one today. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask to see the inside of a car and take it for a test drive before I decide whether or not to buy it.  

Salesman: Let me get the manager and we can work out a deal. 

TD: Never mind. I’m leaving now, but before I go, let me ask you something. Is this the first job you’ve had selling cars?

Salesman: Yes.

TD:  How long have you been here?

Salesman: This is my second week.

TD: What’d you do before that?

Salesman: I’ve had lots of jobs.  

TD: What was the last one?

Salesman: Waiter.

TD: For how long?

Salesman: Four days, but I hated it. People are so rude.

TD: And before that? 

Salesman: I worked at Macy’s.

TD: Doing what? 

Salesman: Selling menswear. I got this tie with my employee discount. Do you like it?

TD: Very nice. How long did you work at Macy’s?

Salesman: Eight days. Wasn’t for me. 

TD: I have to go.

Salesman: Can I have your contact information?

TD: Give me your card and if I decide to move forward, I’ll be in touch.  

Salesman: I don’t have any cards yet, they’re still at the printer. 

TD: What’s your name?

Salesman: Paul. 

TD: OK, Paul.  

Salesman: Be sure to ask for me when you come back. I don’t have a desk yet, so I’ll probably be hanging in the employee lounge.

TD: OK, Paul. I will. Bye.

Epilogue: 

On the way back to my car, I walked past a row of J-55s, two of them blue with tan interiors. I bought one that afternoon at the next dealership I visited.