Problems with the Buick

 I had a small problem with the Buick while filling it up at Thorntons the other day.

I always use my credit card to pay outside.  Doing so forces me to interact with the gas pump.  Feels a little silly.  Black print on a small gray screen asks for my zip code, which I provide, and asks me three questions every damn time, to which I always respond by pushing the NO arrow.

              Are you a Refreshing Rewards Club Member?        NO - I belong to too many things now.

              Would you like to join and save $.03 blah blah        NO – I don’t care

              Would you like a receipt?                                          NO – I got them for years. Never wrong. 

I just want the gas.  Maybe a hot dog.  I’m always aware, standing out there between the Buick and the gas pump, how close I am to the jumbo wieners turning slowly on the roller grill inside the station, shiny with fat, with soft warm buns in the drawer beneath them, and the fresh condiments next to the grill.

It was quite a blow, during the pandemic, when Thorntons went to foil packets only for condiments.  Mustard and ketchup in packets, pitiful dehydrated onions in some chemical soup in a packet, and sludgy packets of relish.  Want a hot dog with the works?  Here you go, take it or leave it.  I declined.  I understood their health concerns, but it was a huge loss.

To their credit, Thortons is slowly bringing fresh condiments back. They sell a lot of hot dogs at their Ottawa store by I-80, which means the dogs and condiments move fast and stay fresh.  Currently they have four little bins with spoons and clear plastic covers containing chopped white onions, sauerkraut, jalapeno peppers, and sweet pickle relish.  Yet to make an appearance are sport peppers, dill pickle spears, and celery salt.  Added to their current condiment buffet is an array of squeeze bottle condiments: yellow mustard, spicy brown mustard, Sriracha, ketchup, and mayo.  The wieners may cook on a roller grill, but Thorntons is the hot dog condiment king.

I skipped the hot dog that day.  I was nearly empty and would no doubt spend plenty on the gas alone.  After getting the gas pumping, I checked the Buick’s oil.  I don’t check it every time because the Buick has never used oil.  It’s a 2006 Lucerne with a 3.8-liter engine and 156,000 miles.  It still runs like a top.  I probably check the oil every other time I fill up.   

I popped the release, pushed up the hood, and put a wooden stick between the hood and the grill.  The pneumatic arm that keeps the hood up wore out.  Happened sometime last winter.  I found a stick the perfect length.  It fits neatly hidden in a tray up by the windshield.  I always planned to get that fixed.

That V-6 Buick engine sits sideways under the hood.  The dipstick is right in front, bright yellow plastic that’s easy to see and grab.

When I pulled the circle handle the dipstick came out hard like it was stuck.  I wiped it off with a blue paper towel I keep tucked under a metal strap towards the headlight.  But when I went to put it back in, it wouldn’t go.  It was stopped by something.  I’ve been driving cars and tractors for sixty years and that’s never happened.  Couldn’t check the oil.  Dipstick wouldn’t go in.  I stuck the point of my pocketknife in the tube that receives the dipstick and found nothing. I used the flashlight on my phone to try to see down into the hole but didn’t see anything.

“I’ll be damned,” I said.

Don’t know if I said it out loud or to myself.  When you’re by yourself a lot you lose track.  I threw the dipstick into the Buick on the passenger side, held up the hood, removed the stick, tucked it into its place, and let the hood slam shut.  My tank was full ($43.00 and some change).  When I started up the Buick its check engine light came on.  I drove away perplexed. 

I called Jim Boe’s independent gas station downtown.  They feature non-descript gas and Firestone Tires.  Jim is gone now you know, but family is carrying on.  They know the Buick pretty well.  A woman answered the phone.

“Hey, I have a funny problem with my 2006 Buick.  I can’t get the dipstick to go back in.  Is that something the guys in the shop can help me with?”

“I don’t know.  Let me check.”

It was an old landline phone.  I heard it clunk as she put it on the counter and while she was gone the murmur of people talking.  You don’t hear that much anymore.

“Yeah, they say come in anytime.”

I had things to do.  Believe it or not, retired people do get busy.  I went in the next day.  That same woman was behind the counter.

“I’m the guy that called the other day with the dipstick problem.”

She laughed. 

“We have just the guy to help you.”

A young guy, big with a full red beard came out and smiled.  He was holding something like a long ice pic with a crook on the end.

“I think I know what’s wrong with that dipstick.”

We walked out to the drive.  I popped the hood release and propped open the hood with the stick.  He didn’t say a word.

‘You got it still?  The old dipstick?”

I pulled it out from the passenger side.  He took one look at it and knew what was wrong.

“There’s a little collar on these now with an O ring.  Started putting them in when they came out with Check Engine lights.  Even a little drop in oil pressure makes the light come on.  See this?  Your collar is gone.  It’s probably down in that tube blocking your dipstick from going in.”’

“I’ll be damned.  I’ve been driving all these years and never heard of that.”

“It happens.  I had one yesterday.  Dipstick handles are plastic after all, and right next to that hot engine block.  Guess it only lasts so long.  This Buick’s a 2006 right?  I’d say 15 years is maybe the limit.  With any luck I can fish it out and get you going again.”

He went down into the Buick’s dipstick hole, I guess you’d call it, with the tool he had in his hand.  It looked homemade.  He pulled it out.

“There’s your O ring.”

Little black circle on the end of his finger. He handed it t me and went back in.  After some shifting and prying around, he appeared to get an angle on something, and drug it back up. Handed me a small yellow plastic crescent.

“There’s half that collar.  Let me see if I can get the other half.  If not, it will more than likely just fall into your oil pan and come out at your next oil change.  Better if I can grab it though.”

In a minute or so he came out with the other half.

“There you go.  Your dipstick technically would still work, but your Check Engine light would always be on, and you’d just figure it was that bad dipstick.  You ought to get a good one.  We keep a few in the back off wrecks and stuff.  Let me see if I can fix you up.”

He was gone a few minutes and then returned.

“No luck.  But they got them at NAPA.  Probably in stock.  Won’t cost you much.”

“Wow.  Thanks very much.  What do I owe you?”

“Nothin’.  Think of us when you need tires.”

“That’s very nice of you.  Thanks again.”

He smiled.

“Say, what do you know about this arm with the cylinder supposed to keep the hood up?”

“Same deal.  They wear out too.  When we work on old cars with bad cylinders like that, we just use vise grips.  Clamp ‘em right here.”

He showed me the spot.

“Works fine.  You can buy those at NAPA too if you want.  Cost you a little more than the dipstick though.  Easy to replace. You can do it yourself.”

He showed me how.  Two screws.  Easy peasy.

“Sure you don’t want anything for this?  You‘re giving me not only free labor but free advice too.”

“No.  Really.  That’s why we’re here.”

 

A new dipstick and hood support were $59.00 at NAPA.  I haven’t gotten around to fixing the hood deal, but I will soon.  I considered getting a cheap pair of vise grips and keeping them in the same place as the stick but that’s not right.  I like to keep the Buick in relatively good shape.  That car has been good to me, and I want to be good to it.  I figure the pandemic added at least a year if not more to the useful life of the Buick.  I barely drove it.  And while I know we’re going through a bad time still with COVID and this Delta variant, it’ll get better.  Has to.  We can’t lose hope. 

After I put that new part on the hood, I’m going to do some serious clean-up on the Buick.  The garden has been hard on it.  I got a lot of dirt in the trunk, and more on the floorboards.  A good vacuuming would do a world of good.  All the vinyl, sidewalls of the tires too,  could use a good wipe down with Armor All. 

The Buick and I haven’t been on a solo road trip since 2018.  I can’t believe it’s been that long. Those road trips in retirement take me back to when I traveled in the ’70s.  I was mainly hitchhiking then, and that’s apparently over.  But there is something about being on the road with time on my hands and all my thoughts to myself that pulls on me.  I have some maintenance issues of my own I need to take care of before I head out.  But I’m anxious to get out there again.  It makes me feel free.

I better see how much tread the Buick has on those tires.

Heading North

 COVID has changed even the simplest of things.  Like the annual guys’ fishing trip to Canada.  What’s simpler than going fishing?   Assemble the group, get the deposits, book a cabin on a lake, buy food, check your equipment, pack up and go, right? 

Wrong.  Last summer, pre-vaccine, the border never opened.  Gary Robinson broke a 30-year string of planning and enjoying group trips to Canada.  He thought the same thing might happen this year, but the Canadian government opened the border on August 9^th.  He quickly put a plan together and we crossed on August 27. But that crossing was completely different.

Most of us remember a time when you could cross into Canada by simply showing your American driver’s license.  9/11 changed all that.  Passports have been mandatory for twenty years, but this year brought several new wrinkles.

The ArriveCan computer app for starters.  It’s like pre-registering to enter Canada combined with providing health information.  The guys in the group helped each other figure it out by multi-texting on our smartphones.  We scanned the strip on our passport, provided photos of our vaccine card, a crossing date, emergency contact information, where we would stay, where we would quarantine if necessary.  Not easy but then again not hard if you have rudimentary computer skills.

Key to the process was proof of a negative COVID test within 72 hours of crossing into Canada.  We all took the drive-through test at Walgreens on the same day and crossed our fingers.  All good.  We took off the next day in two vehicles, one towing a trailer with all our gear.

It was a long trip, 15 hours, but shorter than previous years.  We’ve been driving to Red Lake, Ontario, and flying north onto Job Lake in a bush plane equipped with pontoons.  Job Lake is inaccessible by road and has just one cabin on the lake.  For that reason, the fishing is wonderful, and the privacy is exquisite.  No phone or internet capability.  We are connected to our camp owner by a satellite phone only used for emergencies.

Typically, we drive to International Falls, Minnesota the first night and cross the border into Fort Frances, Ontario the next morning.  But sleeping off eight more hours of our ticking 72-hour COVID test clock spooked us.  We booked a room in Fort Frances knowing we’d feel better when we successfully made it into Canada.  We crossed at 6:00 p.m.

The border official was friendly.  We produced actual passports, vaccine cards, and written copies of our COVID tests, all of which she looked at carefully.  I have a hunch all that information was already on her computer screen, but she checked it anyway and passed us through.  As U.S. citizens, we take our ability to travel freely throughout the world so lightly.  It’s a huge privilege, having access to nearly every nation on the planet, and not just our neighbors to the North.

It’s hard to say what was different about Fort Frances, Ontario after two years had passed.  Like all border towns, the community’s economy is based on those crossing back and forth.  There was a new and nifty cannabis shop so close to the border I think I could have hit a golf ball onto U.S. soil using a sand wedge.  It was busy.  But the town, in general, was not.  The local economy looked to be hard hit by the border closure.

At the Super 8 motel, the counter staff seemed to have been waiting for us.  I think they were smiling but we never saw their mouths.  Staff were strictly masked all the time. Canadians take preventative health measures more seriously than us.  The lobby was largely empty to prevent groups from gathering.  In the dining room, chairs were upside down on the tables and there was no breakfast service.  Brown paper bags were promised for the morning.    

We celebrated our escape from the U.S. that night at a beer and pizza joint close to the motel.  We encountered a long wait for service, not due to a crush of hungry diners, but because tables inside were shut down to provide safe distance between diners.  Our server seemed new.  Could be Canada is experiencing the same slow return to full employment as us.

Typically, the next morning before leaving for the trip into the Northwoods we would stop for one last prized provision.  Our group does serious bacon business in Canada.  You can still get butcher shop bacon up there wrapped in that thick brown waxed paper.  We buy ten pounds for the trip, and some guys buy more to bring home on the way out.  We used to buy it in Red Lake but lost that connection.  Thankfully, we found Einar’s, a tiny convenience store in Fort Frances with a butcher and wonderful thick Canadian bacon.   

I don’t know why bacon is better in Canada, but it is.  Einar slices our bacon from a freshly cured pork belly.  We’ve seen him do it in the store.   Oscar Mayer is no match for Einar’s bacon.  One of our first lunches on the lake is BLT’s with homegrown Illinois tomatoes and Einar’s bacon, and it's built into almost every breakfast.

Trouble was, we had crossed late Friday night and Einar is closed on weekends.  Gary phoned Einar prior to leaving and he promised to bring the bacon to the Super 8 so it was there for us Saturday morning.  It was.  I think Einar needed the business.    

The economics of the resort business changed our trip.  At its best, Northern Ontario’s fishing season is short.  It opens in mid-May and closes in early September.  Fly-in fishing is more expensive, and resorts that provide it face greater costs.  Contracting with pilots, gearing up planes, arranging for a season that could start no sooner than August 9^th, which gave them no more than five or six weeks of bookings, just didn’t add up.  We couldn’t find a fly-in option, to our regular lake or any other.  We were grounded.

So we chose big Lake Wabaskang, three hours North of the border and right around the corner from Perrault Falls.   In past years we would meet lots of southbound U.S. vehicles towing boats heading home on Saturday having finished their trips.  This year, traffic in both directions was light.

At Perrault Falls we turned off the road to Red Lake and followed a gravel trail 50 yards to a small parking lot on a lake.  It was the far south shore of Lake Wabaskang.  Dave, the owner of Peffley’s resort, pulled up shortly after we arrived in an old 21’ fiberglass speed boat with a big Yamaha outboard.  Most of the seats had been pulled out.  We loaded our gear into it.    

“I can only take half of you, so we’re going to have to make two trips.  The lake is really low.  If I put on too much weight, I can’t make it over the rocks in the shallows.  Besides that, I’m waiting on two more guys from Indiana.  They got stuck on the border.  The rest of their group got here yesterday.”     

Our group was headed to the north end of Lake Wabaskang, which covers 15,000 acres and has 105 miles of shoreline. We let the younger guys go ahead so they could get a head start unloading the gear.  I was selected for the second trip.  The boat pulled out and left us on the dock.  Occasionally you could hear a vehicle on the road.  Seemed odd to hear traffic on the lake we were going to fish. 

While we waited the guys from Indiana showed up. They carried a few bags and boxes from their car to the dock and we began to talk.

“Heard you had some trouble at the border.”

“I guess you could call it trouble, yeah.  Big damned confusing mess is what it was.  We didn’t think they were going to let us in.”

“What happened?”

“They said the information on that Canadian computer app didn’t match up with our papers.  Made us pull out of line and re-do it.  Gave us a Wi-Fi code and a password.  I don’t know shit about Wi-Fi.  I tried to tell ‘em that.” 

The other guy chimed in.

“A young guy in a car in line saw what was going on and came over to help us.  Started punching stuff into Jerry’s cell phone.   Got to some point and asked us what our email addresses were.  I knew mine but Jerry didn’t know his.”

Jerry threw up his hands and looked defeated.

“My wife does all that internet stuff.  I don’t pay any attention to it.  She told me I was all set.”

The digital age can be cruel to old guys who checked out of it long ago.  Jerry’s friend picked up the story.

“He don’t know his wife’s number.  So anyway, we got back in line and tried to explain our problem, but they weren’t having it and sent us back to the American side until we got it figured out.”

Jerry hung his head and his friend continued. 

“We lost a day.  My COVID test ran more than 72 hours but thankfully they took my temperature and stuff and didn’t make me take another one.  It was a mess.  But we’re here now.”

“Yep.  And it’s a nice day.”

We heard a boat in the distance.  Soon we were on the way to the fishing camp.  Jerry and his friend from Indiana were long-time acquaintances of Dave.  They hadn’t seen each other for two years and caught up during the trip.

At one point, when Dave throttled down and was scraping rocks in a narrow channel, Jerry inquired about one of their friends who had arrived in camp the day before.

“How many times has Bob fallen down?”

Dave laughed.

“None that I know, but he stumbled clear across the kitchen the other night when we came to visit.  He pulled on the door to let us in, it stuck, he let go of the knob, started pedaling backward, and couldn’t catch himself.  And it’s taking him a long time to get to and from the dock.”

The average age of your typical American fisherman in Canada is not going down.

We arrived at the opposite end of the lake where a cluster of a dozen or more buildings was built on a high rock bluff overlooking the lake. Peffley’s Wilderness Camp has a small protected cove with good solid docks.  Parked in the slips are more than a dozen nice 14’ aluminum fishing boats with new Yamaha electric start 20 hp motors.

Dave tied up on the dock and drove a four-wheeler with a two-wheel trailer down to the lake.  We loaded our stuff onto it to haul to the cabin.  Actually two cabins.  One slept six and a tiny one close by slept two.  Gary and his son took the tiny place.  It sat at a strange angle.

So did the bigger cabin.  If you dropped something off the kitchen table, it rolled clear to the door.   We made up for a lack of electrical outlets with extension cords.  The asphalt shingles were curling up on the roof.  The cabins need a lot of work.

Electricity at Peffley’s is powered by two Diesel generators.  Dave has another fiberglass boat equipped with a 100-gallon tank he uses to haul fuel across the lake to keep the lights on.  He takes good care of the place, cleaning the fishing boats and filling the gas tanks each day.  He makes sure minnows are brought in for bait.  He keeps the fish house, where fish are cleaned and filleted, clean and tidy.  We weren’t used to the comforts, running toilets, a fish house, someone to tend to the boats. 

Many operators of remote camps have invested in solar panels and battery systems on their cabins which provide electricity for the fishermen and pump water to the cabin.  Once those systems are in place, the cost to maintain them can be negligible.  I wondered to myself what it cost Dave to fill that big diesel tank and to keep the generators going for a season. 

Dave lives in Indiana in the off-season.  He bought the camp 16 years ago from its previous owner after fishing it summer after summer.  He’s in his mid-60’s I’d say.  He and his wife are going it alone this summer.

“We shortened the week by a day because we just can’t get one set of guests out, another in, and clean the cabins all on a Saturday.”

“So, usually you have help?”

“Yeah.  We bring in a couple in the middle of May and they stay all summer.  We provide housing of course and much of their food.  We’ve had good luck with Newfies.  The last Newfie couple we had worked six summers straight.”

“Newfies?”

“Canadians from Newfoundland.  Don’t ask me why they work in Ontario so far from home, but it works for them.  Nice people, hardworking.  But you can’t attract those kinds of workers for a five-week season.”

Gary’s booking was last minute.  He had brought a group there many years ago and called Dave on the chance he had an opening.  Many fishing camps on lakes in high demand are typically fully booked for years.  Not so during the pandemic.

“We were damned glad to get your call,” Dave told Gary.  “Sort of put the cap on this sliver of a summer’s business.”

Dave’s wife brought dessert over to our cabin twice, and Dave shared some ceviche he made from Walleye.  We reciprocated by mixing them cocktails.  They’re nice people.

“I thought maybe with the Americans unable to cross the border that Canadians would take up the slack and book the weeks the Americans didn’t use.”

“Nope,” Dave replied.  “It’s not like that.  I think upwards of 85% of the camps are run by guys like me, Americans who visited these lakes, dreamed of owning a resort, and found a way.  And our guests, I’d say 95% of all the fishermen, are American.  Canadians can nearly always find good fishing close to home.  They don’t need to rent boats and cabins for a week.  When the Americans couldn’t come, the resort business crashed.  If it wasn’t for some government help, we’d be out of business by now.”

“Used to be it was all word of mouth.  Most of my guests are from Indiana.  They tell people back home about the place and I get a ton of repeat business.  Most have kept their same weeks for years.  But it’s changing.  What we really need is younger fishermen, and we haven’t gotten them yet.”

We were surprised Dave was able to purchase the camp outright. The more remote fly-in lakes allow only long-term leases for outfitters.  Lake Wabaskang had other private parcels of land tucked here and there, though we saw little activity at their docks.  The other boats we encountered on the lake seemed to all be from Dave’s resort.

Despite the differences with our fly-in lake, Lake Wabaskang had plenty of similarities.  The one I yearned for the most was the quiet.

I consider it quiet in the shack but if I listen closely, I hear vehicles on Route 80, the overhead fan, planes from Skydive Chicago, any number of background noises we hear in our communities but typically filter out.  But on the north end of that giant lake, on flat water ringed by trees and away from towns, deep calm silence wraps around you like a blanket. 

 And on clear nights, the absence of ambient light makes the sky come completely alive; the bright highway of stars that makes up the Milky Way, the constellations.  There are smartphone apps now that you can use to point out the sky.  They outline the constellation you are looking at on the little screen, bringing it to life.

That’s another feature of Dave’s camp.  For the entire trip, we were rarely if ever shut out of an internet connection.  I stayed away from my phone as much as possible, using it mainly as a camera, and tried to ignore my friends who were talking about breaking news.  I was looking forward to being off the grid entirely. Different year, different trip. 

But no matter what men build around those big Canadian lakes some things remain constant.  Lake Wabaskang is a great fishery.  It has depth and variety, good flow in at its shallow north end and out the south at Perrault Falls.  It produces primarily Northern and Walleye Pike, many of them big and healthy.  We made the trip to fish, to be in the company of good friends, and experience the beauty of the Canadian Shield.  Mission accomplished.

Thanks to Gary Robinson for making the trip happen again this year under difficult circumstances, and for thirty years before that.  He has provided a great experience for many of us for a long time.  Give that man a fish. 

June Visits the Doctor

 In mid-April my granddaughter June had a two-month check-up with her pediatrician.  At that visit, she received her first vaccinations.  The midwife that helped with June’s delivery and the pediatrician had both briefed June’s parents about these shots, and they were prepared.  June was not.  Here are the vaccines June was given.

·       ACT/HIB by Sanofi Pasteur - an injection to prevent a range of infections caused by haemophilous bacteria including meningitis.

·       Pediatrix by Glaxo - First of three injections given at 2,4, and 6 months.  The first injection prevents Diptheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus (DPT).  Later shots address all known forms of Hepatitis B and Polio.

·       Prevnar by Pfizer - an injection to prevent pneumococcal pneumonia and more.

·       Rotovirus by Merck – an oral vaccine given to prevent severe diarrhea in infants.

Before the procedure, the nurse prepared them thoroughly.  June’s Mom, my daughter Moe, described the conversation this way.

“OK, here’s how we’ve learned to do this.  We know it’s not easy for you or the baby, but it’s over quickly.  We give her the Rotavirus first.  It’s a gel given by mouth.  As she swallows it, we quickly give her three injections in her thighs.  After the first injection, she’ll likely open her eyes wide, inhale deeply, so much that you think she won’t breathe again.  But don’t be scared.  She’s just getting ready to scream.  Maybe louder than you’ve heard her cry ever before.  It’s what happens. While she screams, we give her two more quick shots.”

“When it’s over I pass June to you, Mom.  You hold her, she settles down, and we’re done.  She may have a little redness or hardening at the injection sites tomorrow, but as the doctor told you, these are notoriously safe drugs with few adverse reactions ever.” 

Moe looked at Don.  He looked worried.  Moe was too.  June was content and relaxed, oblivious to what was about to happen.  Three syringes and a little cup were laid out on a table beside her.  

It went exactly as the nurse predicted.  It was not the nurse’s first rodeo.  It was, however, definitely June’s first.  Here is a picture of June on the ride home.

She doesn’t look happy, does she?  Her Mom and Dad told me later they were pretty sure June was, for the first time, mad at them.

“Get used to it,” I said. ”That won’t be the last time.”

Soon after June’s mom became pregnant, she and June, in a prenatal kind of way, became patients of a group of professionals from West Suburban Midwife Associates, a practice based in Oak Park that works closely with West Suburban Medical Center, a hospital with a birthing center attached. 

Moe came to know a team of midwives that provided all her necessary care.  Later she added a doula, something like a birthing coach for parents, and a pediatrician.  That completed her prenatal, birthing, and postnatal care.  Included was a solid health assessment, vitamins, regular checkups, sonograms, and an amniocentesis, lots of education, and preparation-all while June was in the womb.  And although there was a pandemic and the hospital was wary of people going in and out, Don, June’s father, was also involved at key appointments like ultrasounds, in birthing classes via Zoom, and was there when June was born.  It was a family affair, a family of two becoming three.  With two cats thrown in for good measure.

June has so far been extremely healthy and happy.  The goal is to keep her that way.  She’s now seven months old.  Her preventative care continues.  At her four-month check-up, she received more vaccinations. 

We can only wish everyone in our country had access to such care.  It wasn’t easy to find a birthing center and a practice that would accept Moe and June.  She had insurance, but not a great policy.  Moe is co-owner of a small business that cannot afford a group plan.  She was miles ahead of many women in Chicago however, particularly those living on the South and West sides. 

Too many women in Chicago receive no pre-natal care and simply go to Cook County’s Stroger Hospital when labor begins.  We talk about food deserts in America, but how about healthcare deserts?  What happens to uninsured women unable to find an affordable health care provider to save their soul let alone an obstetrician, a doula, a midwife, a pediatrician - professional medical support of any kind.  I’m grateful Moe and Don had the resources to give June a healthy start.  Quality health care is a blessing families of privilege take for granted.

But back to June.  At her four-month checkup, she received the second of her DPT shots, another oral dose of the Rotavirus vaccine, and more.  June is on a schedule, recommended by the CDC, of being protected from 14 potentially serious diseases by age 24 months.  And so are most American babies.

I don’t know how many or what kind of vaccinations I received as a child.  I remember the sugar cube containing the polio vaccine melting on my tongue in the cafeteria of Danvers Grade School when I was 6 or 7.  I remember the smallpox vaccination, a group of needles that scratched the surface of my upper arm and was checked later by the school nurse.  My Mom is no longer here to ask, but I think I know how it worked.  She would have talked it over with Doc Boone, one of two General Practitioners in the town of Danvers in the ’50s and ’60s.  Two doctors and a pharmacy to boot in tiny Danvers, population 800.  Health care has changed greatly. 

Doc Boone was a quiet man who seemed shy and whistled softly while he examined me.  I could never recognize the tune.  He was a big white-haired man that we trusted implicitly.  He lived with his family in a brick ranch house that also served as his office.  I grew up with his kids.  He would never recommend anything that would harm our family, we were sure of that.  If he recommended childhood vaccinations, Mom and Dad would have taken his advice.

That’s what June’s parents are doing, as do most American parents still.   Vaccination rates for the kind of shots June is getting, the standard protocol for American kids ranges from 81% for DPT to 93% for Polio.  Although the number of parents seeking and getting exemptions from vaccines mandated prior to school admission has gone up recently, our confidence in those vaccines and our willingness to comply remains strong. 

So, we’ll vaccinate our babies, but we won’t take a vaccine for a virus that has disrupted our way of life and our economy, promises to shut down our schools again, and has killed 675,000 Americans?  Really?  We won’t get a shot that threatens our very lives, the lives of those we love, and our neighbors?  What happened?

I won’t pretend I know.  But somehow, we let politics come between us and our common sense.  We’ve allowed rumor to replace fact.  Too many have bought into a bogeyman characterization of the American healthcare system as Big Pharma in cahoots with profit-hungry healthcare organizations that care little about us as individuals.    

But what about the person you most trust for advice about your health?  The Doc Boones of today, the persons you go to when you are sick or in pain?  That face that sits across from you in the exam room, now next to a laptop, and listens to your worries about your health.  What do they say about vaccination?

I had an appointment with my trusted medical professional this week about an old person’s problem not related to COVID.  She’s not a doctor, but a Nurse Practitioner.  I like her better than my doctor.  In fact, I have lost track of who my doctor is these days.  My Nurse Practitioner answers my emails promptly and will do virtual appointments.  She’s accessible, smart, and practical.

“What do you tell your patients who won't take a COVID vaccine?”

She paused.

 “Well, what I say has changed as the pandemic has gone on because we learn more all the time.  There is so much research going on, so many studies out, and it all confirms the safety of these vaccines.  They may be the safest and most effective vaccines ever because of how they’re built.  And I tell them that.”

She sighed.

“And that’s usually not enough.  I ask them what, in particular, they are concerned about so I can tell them what I know specifically.  Myocarditis was a real concern for me and lots of us, but the numbers turned out to be so small that it really is not significant.  Then there was that fear of the vaccine affecting reproduction in women that was completely debunked.  I feel the vaccines are medically proven. There really is no scientific reason to fear any of these vaccines.”

She shook her head.

“It’s so frustrating.  Some people don’t have any specific fear but are just uneasy.  I see it in their faces.  I ask them how long it is going to take for them to be comfortable with it.  Some of my unvaccinated patients are in high-risk categories; obese, elderly, underlying conditions.  They’re taking a big chance by not being vaccinated.  Some of those people get flu shots every year, where the formula changes each time, and don’t think anything of it.  They just say they want to wait on this vaccine and I tell them ‘don’t wait till it’s too late.’”   

“Once, while talking to a patient I know very well, the last patient on Friday of a bad week kind of thing, I just sort of let him have it.  I told him I’ve had patients die from COVID.  I have long-haulers who may never get off oxygen or return to work.  I have wives who have lost husbands and kids who have lost parents.  Those families are never going to be the same again.  That’s what you risk when you refuse to be vaccinated.”

She was on a roll.

“Now I am saying something different.  Look at hospitalizations.  If there are 14 people in our hospital with COVID, 12 of them are unvaccinated.   And virtually all those dying of COVID now are unvaccinated.  It’s become very plain that vaccines prevent hospitalization and save lives.  Sure, there are break though cases where vaccinated people still contract the virus.  But their symptoms are usually mild, and they are rarely hospitalized.  And they certainly don’t experience the lingering effects that my poor long haulers do.  It’s a no-brainer.  And, I hate saying that because some of my patients who are unvaccinated are very smart people.  To them, I say if you don’t want to get vaccinated to protect yourself, do it for your family.  I don’t care why just do it.”

All I could do was nod and agree.

“You probably didn’t expect to hear such a long answer.”

“No.  But thanks.  More people need to hear what our local medical professionals think.  Not just talking heads on TV.”

“I wish they could.” 

“Me too.”

 

Vaccines are a vital part of modern healthcare.  Starting with the rabies vaccine in 1885, which thankfully isn’t needed universally but can wait till a real risk of rabies is encountered, we have found safe ways to prevent disease before it occurs.  Vaccines make us healthier and we live longer as a result.  What is the problem?

Whatever the concerns about the negative effects of COVID vaccines, they are far outweighed for me by the very real risks of getting COVID itself.  My next-door neighbor died of COVID.  I don’t need convincing.  Yet people in my extended family refuse to be vaccinated.  Of all the things that can and do divide Americans, we have let a simple and safe medical procedure further alienate us from one another, with deadly results.  It’s amazing to watch.  I wish I had an answer, a plan, to overcome this craziness, but I don’t.

I had two shots of Moderna vaccine in January and February and I feel fine.  I’m anxiously awaiting the opportunity to receive a booster once a plan is worked out.  I want to be as safe from COVID as I possibly can be, and more than that I want to make sure I am not a threat to people I love, like my granddaughter June.

June, at seven months old, is not eligible for a COVID vaccine but as you saw at the beginning of this piece, she has had whopping amounts of preventative medicines.  How does she feel?  You be the judge.  Here she is at her Uncle Dean’s condo a couple weeks after the latest round of shots playing peek-a-boo with her grandma.   

June in July

 After many twists and turns, literally, my wife and I got back to Chicago to visit our kids and our grandchild June.  She was five months old on July 17 and very different from when we saw her on our last visit to Chicago in April. 

On this trip, we parked the car in Joliet and took the Metra.  Coming into LaSalle Street station felt like old times like we were getting back to normal.  We took an Uber to Dean’s place.

Dean is working from home in a new condo in Pilsen.  He is among the first five owners.  We dropped our stuff off, admired his new digs, and Moe and June arrived to take us north.  Dean had to be on a Zoom call.  We were meeting Don, June’s Dad, at Arlington Racetrack.  He works near there.

It was a hot afternoon, but we grabbed a picnic table under a tree and there was a nice breeze.  We put a blanket on the ground for June, bought hot dogs and beers, and settled into an afternoon of watching the horses run.  Although we talk almost daily, we caught up on being together.  We passed June around.  She was having a good day.  Almost all her days are good.  And different.  She’s growing up at an amazing pace.

And of course, we bet on the horses.  In a typical year, I place bets on three horse races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.  When I bet on the triple crown, I read about the horses in the paper a few days in advance, think about them briefly, and make very small wagers.  I am not a gambler or a student of the sport, but sometimes I pick winners.  I find that to be great fun. 

While shooting the breeze we talked about how to pick horses.  Don likes to bet the jockeys.  I was reading the racing form trying to figure out the records of the horses, and he was looking at the jockeys’ ages and percentage of wins.  His theory is, especially in a short race, the skills of the jockeys mattered as much or maybe more than the speed of the horse.

My wife bets the horses’ names, with an eye on the color of the silks.  The last time Colleen was at Arlington, with a group of friends, she won big on an exacta using that method.  Winning big is relative, but she walked away with over a hundred bucks and a story she tells anyone who will listen.   She couldn’t wait to do it again.

Meanwhile, I stuck with the racing form, both the statistics and the short narrative about each horse.  I especially liked the narrative which gave me a short description of the horse’s performance in recent races, conditions the horse favored, quirks and patterns.  I walked through the gate knowing nothing about any horse or any jockey who raced that day and tried to learn it all during the time between races.  Probably not a formula for success.  But I was confident I could figure it out. 

We joked about how we made picks.  Don suggested we hold June face down above the racing form, let her drool, and bet the horse closest to the wet spot.  Good as any other scheme he figured. 

In one of the early races, there was an Irish horse at 8-1.  Bred and trained in Ireland and brought over to the states for the summer.  I’m Irish, and my wife is even more Irish.  June looks very Irish.  My wife pointed out the jockey had green silks. 

“I’m going to bet that horse,” I said. 

Don was running to the window making our bets and there were fifteen minutes or so left to get the bets down.  I turned to the racing form and read about my pick.  I’d learned to note the length of the race.  This race was relatively long.  The narrative writer said the Irish horse liked to break out front but faded from the lead in his last three races.  Bad quality in a long race.  Another horse, the favorite, had won its last three starts decisively.  I had second thoughts.

Don came around collecting money and writing down our bets.  I put a larger amount than normal on the favorite. 

“You’re not betting the Irish horse?”

“I don’t think this is the race for him.”

I’ll be damned if that Irish horse didn’t come from behind in the last eighth of a mile, whiz past the horse I put money on, and win.  Completely against the odds.  That’s what makes horse racing a gamble.

I did win later, on a long shot named Devil Eye.  I’ve been having a devil of a time with this right eye all summer, and it seemed appropriate.  I stopped reading the back story on the horses.  It’s hard to become an expert in a day.  Devil Eye led the entire trip and won going away.  Go figure.  In the end, my wife and I nearly broke even money-wise but finished way ahead after a wonderful day at the track with Don, Moe and June.

We all made our way back to Pilsen.  June slept in the car.  When we got back to Dean’s place the charcoal was going in a grill that had been in a box when we arrived that afternoon.  We dug into appetizers on the patio and began our first family celebration in Dean’s new place.  It got dark, the streetlights came on, and we stayed up late talking.  It was good to be together having a home-cooked meal.   During that evening I thought back to when we first had our parents to our new house in Ottawa.  I’ve traded places with my dad.

We stayed two nights and came home late the third day.  We went to dinner in Chinatown, which was packed, walked with Dean and his partner to a little Mexican joint on West 18^th  for breakfast, planted and mulched around Dean’s patio, and more.  It wore us out in a good way.

But the main attraction, aside from Dean’s new kitten, was June.  We see her almost daily on FaceTime but being with her continues to amaze me.  If I am declining as I approach 70 at the same rate June is developing on her way to her first birthday, I can’t be long for this world. 

Two months ago, June rolled over for the first time.  It was a struggle, and when she went from her back to her stomach, she couldn’t hold her head up very long.  With her face flat against the blanket, she soon became fussy, and couldn’t roll back over.  Her Grandma and I wanted to pick her up right away.  Moe and Don urged us to wait a bit.

“We want her to figure things out by herself.” 

She’s figuring things out all right.  Now when she rolls over, she goes into what amounts to an upward-facing dog and stays that way.  Her arms and neck are so much stronger now.  She can stay in that position a long time.  In the past week she’s gone beyond that and now presses her legs against the floor, sometimes just her feet, going into something of a baby plank.  (Yoga positions.)

In the past week in addition to turning in a slow spin on her belly, she’s begun to travel while on her stomach, but backwards.  Put something in front of her and she gets excited, works her legs and arms to get it, but goes the wrong way.  Once again, her parents are waiting for her to figure it out.  She works hard.

On the blanket at the track, June’s grandpa couldn’t resist bending her legs, putting her knees under her against the ground, and giving her a tiny push on the butt to show her how to propel herself forward.  She can’t yet do it herself. 

I’m fascinated by how June looks at me through her brand-new eyes.  She has no words of course, and until she does, we just guess as to what she sees and thinks. 

How do babies learn about the world and discover their part in it?

That question began to form immediately after her grandma and I climbed the stairs of June’s home, a Humboldt Park apartment, and held her the first time.  She was a week old.  Her eyes were deep blue and seemed to look right through me. I wasn’t prepared for her stare.  It was disarming.  June’s been staring me down ever since, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, but always so engaging. 

Turns out I’m not the only one obsessed with finding out the answer to these questions.  Her parents are too, and they’re sharing what they are learning.  

My daughter put me on to a Radiolab Deep Cuts podcast made in 2009, which is simply a conversation between two men, Jad Abumrad (JA), then a new father of a two-month-old baby boy, and Charles Fernyhough (CF), a writer and developmental psychologist from Durham University.  Fernyhough wrote a book about what he learned about his own baby called A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist’s Chronicle of His Daughter’s Developing Mind.  It’s about what’s happening in the minds of little babies when they are brand new.  The interviewer asked the author the kinds of questions I would have asked him.  Like this.

JA.   When I’m sitting here holding my baby and we’re staring at each other, what exactly is he seeing?

CF.   One difference that relates to the visual system is that the lenses of baby’s eyes are absolutely crystal clear, whereas our lenses, those of adults, they’ve become slightly yellowed and filter out some of the blue frequencies of the light we see. 

JA.   So, wait.  Paint the picture.  What would that be like for them?

CF.  This is my stab at imagining what this would be like for babies.  Imagine being in a Greek village in the summer.  At noon. 

JA.   Sun is directly overhead, and It’s one of those villages where…

CF.   Everything is white.  You know, the houses are all painted white.  You’re wearing sunglasses, and you suddenly take off those sunglasses.

JA.   It’s that bright?

CF.   Yeah.  I think light is a big – it’s probably the biggest shock to newborn babies.

JA.   It’s interesting to consider that such a blinding haze of whiteness might be how the world really is.  We just don’t see it as grownups because our eyes have changed.  Well, we did see that brightness when we were babies, but we can’t remember.  What about sound.  Do babies hear things differently?

CF.   Yeah, we think so.  We think they hear echoes.  I mean the echoes are actually always there, but our brains filter them out.

JA.   Whoa.

CF.   It takes some time for babies to do that.  I mean, the science is complicated, and I don’t think I can explain it quickly, but it has to do with the relative times of arrival sound makes on the two ears.  The brain basically has to learn to make the adjustment, but it can’t do it straight away.  So, we don’t actually know, but we guess that newborn babies hear things in a very echoey way.  And then after a while, they filter out the echoes and begin to hear like you and me.

JA.   Let’s go back to vision.  What about the stare?  My baby really stares at us, and we stare back.  It’s intense.  That I know for sure.

CF.   In the first couple of months, the visual system is controlled by an old region of the brain, the subcortical region.  The cortex is the more sophisticated new part, evolutionarily speaking.  In babies there’s a switch, a handoff between the original control system, the subcortical system, and the new cortical system that allows vision to grow and improve.  But as this happens, and it happens at about two months, there’s a kind of power struggle.  The subcortical region doesn’t want to let go.  So, the baby temporarily loses control of where he or she is looking.

JA.   Really?

CF.   Yep.  The scientists call this sticky fixation.  It’s where a baby will just keep staring at you, as if he or she can’t take their eyes off you.

JA.   Yes.  It’s happening now.  It’s wonderful.  You’re telling me this is a brain glitch?

CF.   Yeah.  I’m sorry.  It’s a very well-documented phenomenon.  I know its bad news for parents who think their babies are staring at them adoringly, but they don’t know where to look.  They can’t control where they look.  Basically, they don’t know how to look away.

JA.   Wow.  Depressing. 

CF.  Yeah, but this might be one of those cases where ignorance really is bliss because the truth is you have to project.  You have to make a leap of faith so that when your baby looks at you and you look back at your baby, you smile.  Because eventually, that will teach your baby how the world works.  Humans operate on relationships, which are feedback loops. So OK, at this moment in time for your baby the looks aren’t genuine and done by choice, but they will be soon. You want to return that gaze and make it positive.

 

June in July, at five months old, is way past involuntary stares and the echoey hearing.  She’s moved on.  As a tiny human being brand new to the world she is tuning into everything and everyone around her.  She is figuring things out at a dizzying pace.  She can grab both feet (Happy Baby) and put her toes in her mouth.  She can sit independently.  I expect her to crawl across the floor any day.  And she has a heartbreaker of a smile.  There’s a whole world out there for her to explore.  I want to watch her do it.  And I hope to be part of helping June learn how the world works.

Vegetables 2021

On a farm less than ten miles away, where I am fortunate to be offered space, I have a garden in one long row.  It’s a much straighter row this year.  I was subtly provided a string stretched tightly between two stout steel stakes. 

Last year, my first on the farm, I made the mistake of not looking behind me while planting.  My row was shorter and bowed out in both directions, zigging and zagging so much that the farmer who lends me the land couldn’t cultivate next to my row.  I learned not looking back may be a life strategy that has its place, but that place is not found in a garden.

I’ve just caught on, after nearly 70 years, to the important-sounding botanical family names of these familiar plants.  I was slow to learn.  But now that I’m there I’ll throw them in.  Here’s how I filled my straight row, starting from the east. 

Thirteen Brassicas-3 Brussels Sprouts, 4 Dino Kale, 4 Red Russian Kale, 2 Broccoli.

Forty-six Nightshades-not counting potatoes.  First the Peppers:  5 Serrano, 5 Habanero, 2 Cayenne, 2 Jalapeno, 3 Sheepnose Pimiento, 3 Lunchbox, 2 Shishito, and 4 Jimmy Nardello.  26 total.

Next the Tomatoes.  8 San Marzano, 2 Early Girls, 2 Orange Beefsteak, 2 Pink Beefsteaks, 2 Red Beefsteaks, 2 Jet Stars, and 2 tomato cousins, the Tomatillos Verde.  20 in all.

Lots (too many to count) of Amaryllidaceae, the formal name for the onion family.  I planted nearly enough shallot, red, and yellow onion sets to fill out the row.

 The row is capped it off on the West End by a member of the Daisy Family, a single Mexican sunflower, for the sheer hell of it.   

 Earlier in the spring, in a separate communal plot, we planted four rows of potatoes.  Oddly, they’re nightshades like tomatoes and peppers even though they grow underground.  We buried reds, cobblers, fingerlings, and exotic yet controversial purple potatoes under nice black LaSalle County soil.

I love the hidden life of potatoes.  The reveal when you dig them.  That, compounded by the satisfaction of knowing you made them multiply by simply cutting and planting a chunk of raw potato with an eye in it, makes potatoes a simple but wonderful crop.   The cutters, planters, diggers and tenders of those potatoes will dole them out in equal shares when we harvest them at the end of the season. 

At my house in town, I have horseradish, oddly an underground member of the mustard branch of the Brassica family, asparagus from the aptly named and I assume small Asparagaceae family, and rhubarb of the Polygonaceae aka buckwheat tribe.  How buckwheat relates to rhubarb I’ll never know.  All that stuff grows perennially.

I planted cukes and zukes (cucumbers and zucchinis), both from the Cucurbitaceae family, in my previous garden plot by the garage.  My former town garden looks so small compared to the row in the country.  The old garden space is now partially but increasingly shaded by a young volunteer oak tree, likely planted by a squirrel burying an acorn.  I was going to transplant the oak seedling to keep the garden in full sun but waited too long.  Instead, I sacrificed my original small garden plot for what I expect will be a nice big shade tree for someone else.

I also have big pots of herbs off the kitchen with several kinds of Basil-Tulsi, Thai, and Sweet along with Rosemary and German thyme all from the Mint family.  Rounding out the herb pot is Italian flat-leaf Parsley, an Umbellifer.  If I had planted one more particular plant, I would have created within that herb collection the famed quartet of Simon and Garfunkel spices.  But I don’t use sage much, so I left it out.  But you know the tune.  If you don’t watch out it will become your earworm for the rest of the day. 

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

We also have two big pots of chives, the smallest and skinniest member of the onion branch of the Amaryllidaceae family, which are much more than we need and out of control.  They come back each year no matter how little care we give them.

I was out at the farm last week watering.  Gardening seems so simple at the beginning.  The ground is bare except for the plantings.  The beginnings of weeds may be there, but they are tiny and easily ignored.  At some point, they explode, and weeding becomes frantic.  Unfortunately, when you water your plants, you water the weeds too.

Then comes the staking of the tomatoes.  Pinching off early blossoms and suckers.  Tying vines gently to rigid structure with strips of cloth.  It takes some time.  And despite all our efforts, it is the weather, more than anything we do, that largely determines success.

I’m always relieved when the plants are in the ground.  It is only then that I appreciate each trip to the country.  It gets me out of town, looking at what’s new on the farms I pass, admiring cows still in pastures, and witnessing the explosive growth of Illinois corn and beans in those giant fields.

I swear each year the fields grow larger, farmhouses and barns grow fewer, while the new architectural kings of the Midwest countryside, silver grain bins with propane tanks and steel sided pole barns for massive machinery, multiply like rabbits.  There are fewer animals and people out there all the time.  It’s beginning to look like an ag factory on a grand scale, complete with all the charm factories exude.

But I just tend to my row.  I swear that country garden kept me alive and sane during the pandemic.  I think I’ll always remember realizing (or did I know all along?) that life goes on no matter how dire threats become to us humans.  I was standing next to the pepper plants one day when it hit me.  The sun was where it should be.  The sky was just as big.  The breeze blew the same as always and the plants were not fazed.

Plants are so much simpler and more focused than humans.  They stay put and live out their purpose without a lot of screwing around.  Their purpose is simply to grow and reproduce.  Thank God for plants to hang on to when everything else seems to collapse around us. 

I’ll let you know how the garden turns out.  Maybe I can explain how those vegetables taste.  We’ll see.