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Tree Surgeon

The second hand swept past twelve midnight on the operating room clock as the retractor dug into the palm of my hand and my biceps lactate level soared. “Hmm, you’re choosing Internal medicine?”, intoned Dr. G, as he directed the surgical resident to place catgut sutures into a human gut that was defiled by a stab wound in the heat of a gang altercation in East Los Angeles in 1977.  I pulled on the retractor as Dr. G. sermoned his soliloquy on the superiority of surgical practice. “Who is going to save the patient with appendicitis or peritonitis from certain death? The surgeon!”, he emphatically answered. 

Morning arrived quickly and surgical rounds began as a retinue of visiting professors, fellows, residents, interns, social workers, case workers, physical and occupational therapists and finally third year medical students filed in behind Dr. G. In my sleep deprived mind, I saw his surgical cap as a tri-cornered hat, his pocketed stethoscope as a sword and his entry through the door of the large L.A. County Hospital ward as passing under a faux Arc de Triomphe after his conquests at Austerlitz. Moments later, he transmogrified into a fusion Perry Mason and Clarence Darrow, as he interrogated a profusely sweating surgical resident who had the misfortune of a post cholecystectomy wound infection.

Many decades later, playing “where are they now?,” I did the perspicacious detective work of finding out what accolades Dr. G. had received in the 21st century.  In other words, I had googled his name. Up came the answer: He had retired to a South Pacific Island to manage a greenhouse and take care of plants and trees on the island. He had become a plant and tree doctor! The head of Los Angeles County Trauma Response who had mended miles of injured intestines, cauterized thousands of bleeding blood vessels, and drained an ocean of abscesses had become a tree and plant caretaker. I was gobsmacked to say the least.

 Trees were meant to be cut down to make way for McDonalds’ parking lots, inspire insipid poems that 4th graders needed to memorize, and knock down errant golf balls.  (Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of D- Day and former  U. S. President, urged Augusta National Golf Club to cut down a tree on the 17th hole that consistently stymied his tee shot).

As the years peeled away and I grew more gray, I learned respect for green. Peripatetic journeys with my botany-wise spouse and selected artificial intelligence plant apps opened up the world of beauty and ecological necessities of our flora. The mountain ash leaves feeding an army of tadpoles, our Red Osier Dogwood stabilizing our topsoil and preventing erosion, sunflowers blooming in summer and providing sustenance for bees, the Oregon Crabapple providing shelter and food for the Bluebird and Cardinal, and the joyful human stroll under the elevated tunnel of American Elms lining the Literary Walk at Central Park, are fine examples of the edification and beauty I had discovered in my new-found hobby of tree identification and exploration. 

Dr. G had seen decades of turmoil and tragedy mending the human body in East LA. He found tranquility and peace tending the South Pacific flora thousands of miles from the mainland. His time spent caring for trees, I would like to think, was like a healing tonic for a soul undoubtedly troubled and fractured from the many toils and challenges of practicing medicine and surgery for decades.  In a sense, he was finding his humanity and giving back to the planet what we have taken for granted for so long: the life-giving beauty of the Kingdom Plantae.  I have to admit, I completely understood.

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Travel Mishaps

Fifty-two years ago my dorm roommate and I hitchhiked from the University of Buffalo to        SUNY Albany. Three successive rides found us in the commercial district of Syracuse. As the day passed, the temperature dropped and the cars whizzed by our outstretched hypothermic thumbs. Dejected, we walked to the Bus Station and contemplated our next step. With no time and no money for a round-trip to Albany and back to Buffalo, we bought a one way ticket back to our starting point of Buffalo. We sat down next to a middle aged man in a wrinkled suit and waited for our Greyhound bus. “Is there a decent restaurant around here?” we asked our seatmate. “There is a great Italian restaurant around the corner,” he stated confidently. Pooling our meager resources we sought out the trattoria and ordered a plate of pasta. The spaghetti was served as stiff as straw.  Our resident restaurant critic at the bus station had clearly steered us wrong.

Twenty years later, my hitchhiking days behind me, I drove with a friend to San Francisco. With the passenger seat littered with AAA and Rand McNally maps, my navigator advised staying on I-80 as the Embarcadero came into view.  “On no!”, I muttered, as I realized I was going the wrong way on the LONG Oakland Bay Bridge toward Oakland and was doomed to pay a double toll. 

Undeterred by my past travel mistakes, my family embarked on a European vacation at the turn of the century. My spouse, a capable cartographer and blessed with a directional sense like a passenger pigeon,  assured me that we were not going to get lost. We rented a Renault in Paris, buckled up our two boys,  and set out to discover the continent.  A few miles out  I failed to translate the “sens unique” (one-way sign, not covered in High School French). Sweating profusely, I made an instantaneous U turn and avoided a vacation ending collision. We arrived in Aachen, Germany and entered a museum devoted to Charlemagne. The exhibit explanations were in German with no translation. Ich bin ein Berliner and aufedasein were the extent of our German vocabulary. We detoured to the snack bar to complete the museum experience. That evening we arrived in Strasbourg with a thimble full of gas in the tank. The next morning, I pulled into the gas station, opened the gas tank door and noticed French instruction on the inside door (words, again not covered in High School French). I filled the tank and set off to Switzerland. A few miles onto the highway, the car started to lurch and emit a high pitched moan as I was shifting my manual transmission into 2nd gear. I got off the highway into rush hour Strasbourg traffic when the car led out a cringe worthy groan and stalled. Behind our Renault were at least 50 angry French commuters yelling French words (that again were not covered in High School French class). Later that day, a mechanic, with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lip, informed me of my error of filling up a diesel engine with regular gas. He muttered some unintelligible French sentences but my rudimentary French picked up some words (stupide: stupid, guignol: clown).

After the ordeal, we decided to recharge with French cuisine. The bill came and I calculated the tip by mentally converting dollars into Francs. I mistakenly used the wrong currency in the calculation and was off by a factor of ten. The waiter was elated by his generous tip and my wallet was a good deal lighter.  I had finished the day with a trifecta of vacation gaffes.

I am now millions of neurons lighter in the 21st century compared with my youthful self but have gained “vacation bonus IQ points” with the advent of smartphone technology. Currency converters keep tabs on the foreign exchange markets by the nanosecond.  Apple and Google Maps keep me on track and down the right one way streets. I was cruising in the Mojave Desert on I-15 last week and the app warned of an accident (truck on fire) halting all traffic for 2 hours. As the temperatures soared in the desert, I placed a  call to the California Highway Patrol.   The California Highway Patrol representative asked, “ What lane are you in?”  “The far left lane,” I answered. “Stay in that lane. We just opened up that lane 60 seconds ago and you should be good.” Seconds later, the cars started to inch forward and we made our way past the accident. It was highway nirvana. 

Language barriers have fallen. Despite English ubiquity, Google Translate helped convert German menus, German museum placards and German signs into understandable jargon.  Impractical high school French classes devoid of real life vocabulary are no longer  dangerously impactful. Choosing a restaurant no longer requires a recommendation from a fellow bus passenger.  Today, Yelp, Google and TripAdvisor have us covered wherever we go in the world. 

 In May of this year, we took a trip through Eastern Europe for almost a month without a hitch.  I relied heavily on my technology loaded Iphone, T-Mobile cell towers and an occasional friendly recommendation from an equally tech savvy European citizen.  But travels would not be travels without mishaps that many times end up being memorable happy accidents.  The proof:  many years later these are the stories my family and I speak of and write about.

I am still recovering from my Diesel Mishap but encouraged to know that fossil fuels are in the rear view mirror and electric vehicles in the future will have only one plug to choose from. 

I

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Message to Comic-Con Museum: Add Superman ASAP

It has been 40 years that I have perambulated Balboa Park and admired its variety of museums. The Hall of Champions was one of my favorites given my obsession with all things sports. It was bittersweet looking at the exhibits knowing that San Diego had an acute shortage of victors in professional sports. The AFL Chargers of Lance Alworth fame from the early 1960’s, way before the NFL merger, were an exception. The Padres, losers of two World Series, Dennis Conner, who lost America’s Cup Yachting race after 132 years of successful American defense and the loss of two NBA franchises were reminders of San Diego’s “snake bitten” past.

In 2017 the Hall ceased operation and a new museum was to take its place. Inspired by the summer Comic Con Convention, its mission was to educate and entertain the public with comic and popular art forms. It vision, summarized on the website:

  • Thrive as a world-class attraction and gateway to popular art, culture, and life-long learning for San Diego residents and visiting tourists.
  • Serve as a pop culture focal point, enhancing the ways San Diego celebrates its unique place in the popular culture landscape.
  • Enhance the economic strength of the community.
  • Become a sustainable model for equitable and environmentally-sound community service through our practices and offerings.

The hard opening of the museum on July 1st featured the Marvel Universe, Spiderman and all his glories and Ernest Hemingway in comics. I strolled up to the entrance and asked a spokesperson about the details of the Superman exhibit. “Oh we don’t have a Superman exhibit yet,” she said. “But we are in negotiations with DC Comics.” “How could this be?“, I mused as the 12 year old inside of me tried to cope with this disappointment. My formative years were shaped by Action and Superman Comics. I learned about inflation (10 cents/copy in 1960, 12 cents a few years later), toxicology (green, gold and red kryptonite), journalism (The Daily Planet and its staff) and infatuation (I had a crush on Linda Lee Danvers, Supergirl’s alias). 

I had pressing 21st century questions for the Superman franchise: How had climate change affected the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic? Did the Daily Planet survive and gain a digital footprint? Superman is faster than a locomotive but is he faster than a Saturn Rocket?

I respect all of the Gen Xers, Millennials and pre-baby boomers who revere Marvel and will flock to San Diego in the coming days to attend Comic Con and its new museum. But I implore all  baby boomers and supporters to take action. The “Man of Steel” who stands for “Truth, Justice and the American Way” is needed now more than ever.

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Peering into the Past and Future: Riding Down the Rhine and Danube

It was time to travel despite a war in Eastern Europe, runaway inflation, political turmoil and exploding Omicron SARS-CoV2 variants. With a KN-95 mask, COVID antigen tests and $50 worth of digital guidebooks in hand, we boarded a river boat to glide upstream down the Rhine, Mein and Danube, from Amsterdam to Budapest  to find history, fine spirits and the origins of ancestor’s past. 

We were going to the edge of civilization, as the Romans had defined it circa 2000 years ago. The Rhine and Danube were the North and Eastern boundaries of the empire, warding off the barbarians, the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths and Franks. The Franks had plundered Eastern and Western Europe, united under Charlemagne and eventually (?with the help of intermarriage and French wine) settled down in France so their ancestors could appreciate fine architecture, food and Jerry Lewis.

 The tragedies of history were retold by guides, museums and historical plaques as the craft dodged buoys and passed feudal castles. In Amsterdam, Cologne, Regensburg, Vienna, Rothenburg, Bratislava and Budapest were military monuments, holocaust memorials, mass graves, ramparts and moats, museum artifacts, artillery and ballistic impacts on stone walls that testified to perpetual war and oppression from the Middle Ages onward. The grievances are engraved in our schoolbooks: Romans v. Barbarians, Christians v. Arabs (Crusades 1-4), Protestants v. Catholics (30 Years War and others), Ottoman Empire v. “Civilized” Europe, Habsburgs v. National Uprisings in the mid nineteenth Century, Prussian Wars of the late 19th century.  The 20th century brought us World Wars I and II ending the Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires and Hitler and the Third Reich at the expense of over 60 million lives.

As we headed South and East along the Rivers, I encountered glimpses of my Jewish heritage. The Jewish Diaspora from antiquity forced migration from Western to Eastern Europe along the Rhine and Danube. Jews were  multilingual merchants, bridging the Arab and European divide and helping to create the trade routes from Asia, Africa and Europe. They were artisans in the pre-industrial world and creators of the financial world that allowed the development of city-states. Judaism financed the release of Richard the Lion Hearted of England’s release from captivity and paid for the defense of Vienna against Ottoman Invasion in the 17th century. Yet, each town’s history was marked by the same recurring theme: Jewish expulsion and persecution.

Tragedy often begets opportunity. Science, medicine and art blossomed along these European river tributaries. Booerhaave, the Dutch physician, organized hospital divisions, defined pathology and described his eponymous esophageal rupture syndrome. Dicke, an Amsterdam physician, recognized  abdominal pain and diarrhea in Dutch children reintroduced to bread following privations of World War II and described celiac disease. Down the Rhine at Erlangen, Germany, Demling and Classen devised a modified electrified wire passed through an endoscope and allowed non surgical removal of bile duct stones in a jaundiced nurse in 1973, introducing therapeutic biliary endoscopy to the world. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, discoverer of X rays, taught on the Mein River at Wurzburg in the late 19th century. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis treatise and practice was a part of 1890’s Vienna. Laszlo Biro from Budapest, invented the ballpoint pen and freed the world from fountain pen leakage.

Music flourished along the river, providing the world with the classics from Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt.

 History was infused in everything we saw and consumed. I ate herring in Amsterdam as the Dutch West India Company sailors did before traveling to Nieuw Amsterdam and quaffed Riesling from The Rhine Valley from Middle Age monastery vineyards. A McDonalds and statues of Ronald Reagan and George Bush in Budapest were symbols of who won the Cold War. 

The realities of the past portend the fragility of peace for the future. The murmurs from these ancient rivers give us pause to respect and cherish our freedoms. 

Mozart’s Piano
Budapest Market
Rhine Wine
Vineyard Rudesheim Germany
Rembrandt’s Studio
Flowers in Amsterdam
On the Amsterdam Canal
Children on Margaret Island Budapest
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The House that Ruth (Beer) Built

I was perched in the upper deck of venerable Yankee Stadium as the dulcet tones of “O Canada” serenaded the patrons. As the Yankees took the field for a day game against the Toronto Bluejays, my thoughts turned toward food and beverage. A hot dog and a beer, I mused, was the classic choice. I felt the kinship of brews from the past, imagining my Uncles’ Bill and Herman and Cousin Jack quaffing Ballentine, Rheingold and Knickerbocker Beer under the facade as the IRT Subway rumbled by and DiMaggio rounded the bases.

I was well aware of the importance of beer in life and in baseball. It established prehistoric man’s enthusiasm for agriculture, paid the wages of those who built the pyramids and motivated  thousands of undergraduates to learn beer pong. In the mid 19th century, immigrants from Europe migrated across the Atlantic, to the land of opportunity.  One in particular, the Bavarian Franz Ruppert, established a brewery in  New York to slake the thirst of 19th century New Yorkers. Franz’s grandson, Jacob Ruppert, Jr. inherited the brewery from his father and purchased the struggling New York Highlanders in 1915. With his “beer wealth” he rebranded the club the Yankees, bought Babe Ruth from the Red Sox, established the farm team system, put numbers on the player’s uniforms and moved the Yankees out of the Polo Grounds and into a new Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx.

 Ninety-nine years after the opening of the original Yankee Stadium and 27 championships later, the “beer magnate’s” acumen has proven successful.

The memories of Three Ring Ballentine and Knickerbocker Beer have faded but the smell of outfield turf, and the aroma of malt and hops in the upper deck and bleachers in the Bronx in springtime lives on. And as the 20th century philosopher and late Yankee announcer Mel Allen opined, “How about that!”

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Searching for One’s Youth In Retirement

Retirement is the quest for one’s lost youth. My ace in the hole might be a worm hole,  which is  a celestial conduit to shrink time and space and therefore a chance to time travel back to my healthier optimistic younger self. This vision was shattered when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking pronounced time travel incompatible with current physics theories. My 401K, ear marked for purchasing a used DeLorean and a Flux Capacitor for time travel, was now to be directed to other pursuits.

Plan B was a more prosaic pathway for youthful pursuits: relocate to South Florida known as the “sixth borough” of New York City. I found myself approaching the 8th decade of life in the company of nonagenarians who referred to me as “sonny” and “junior.” The airwaves were filled with promises of youthful regeneration: dental implants to restore vitality to your oral cavity, walkers that will bestow Olympic style feats to your daily regimen and skin fillers that will erase your wrinkles.

Working venues for conversation shifted from corporate boardrooms and hospital clinic corridors to the retirement social gathering places of Florida: card rooms, MahJong parlors, something called a “PickleBall court” and golf course tee boxes.  Comments from my contemporaries at the  the diners and delis now include: “remember when the subway cost 10 cents,” “do you recall John Glenn circling the earth from a black and white TV in school?” 

One day, on a typical golf tee in South Florida adjacent to an alligator filled water hazard, a taciturn man removed his tee peg from the ground and began the traditional exchange of identities to the rest of the foursome. “A retired principal and educator from the Northeast” I heard. The conversation continued as specifics of his working life seemed to get closer to the geography of my youth. The Northeast became New York City and then Queens and then Bayside. I furtively glanced at his golf bag and a name tag came into view. This was Mr. Thompson, my 7th grade science teacher! For an instant, I entered my private wormhole back to 1966. It was a school day and I was out of class without a hall monitor pass. Did I break the Erlenmeyer flask, and if so, would Mr. Thompson charge me with interest (compounding at 3% with a 56 year late fee)? Will I ever dunk a basketball and why don’t I get invited to middle school parties? The shooting pain in my back brought me back  to the 21st century and present day reality. 

Mr. Thompson had an advanced degree in chemistry, devoting his life to teaching generations of middle school science students. As we walked through the palm trees and sawgrass, he provided the details of maintaining educational excellence as principal and backstories of teachers living in the ’60’s that were ensconced in my archaic memory.

I struck my next shot and watched it splash in the H20 hazard, descending into the briny NaCl estuary and settling into the amino acid coated bottom. Mr. Thompson approved of my nomenclature which softened the grief of the lost ball. 

As the wormhole to the past closed up, I reflected on the good fortune of having dedicated and respected public school educators bestowing knowledge to a clueless adolescent.   However, the real joy of discovering your former science teacher on the golf course 56 yrs later was watching his facial expression spread with pride as I told him of his influence in guiding and preparing me for a career in medicine.   He thanked me for the closure and said the broken Erlenmeyer flask was forgiven. It was a perfect day on the golf course and I felt a definite youthful spring in my step.

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Life Measured in NFL Memories

The tears were streaming down my face in 1963 as my father ushered us into his Oldsmobile and drove to my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn in stone-cold silence. My beloved New York Giants had just lost the NFL Championship to the Chicago Bears, ending a run of Championship games and to enter last place purgatory for years to come. “How could they lose with Sam Huff, Jim Katcavage, Y.A. Tittle, and Frank Gifford on the field,” I stammered, squeezing my Kyle Rote autographed football ever more tightly in the back seat.

Emotion and memory are forever linked in our national psyche and football has a tight grip on both. The exact street where I stood 1/2 century ago when I learned the Giants drafted the running back, Tucker Frederickson and later traded for QB Fran Tarkenton are branded into my senescent consciousness. Later, in college, watching on a black & white TV and manipulating the rabbit ears to get a clearer picture, I saw Roger Staubach come into view. My roommate, entered the living room after an all night Bridge tournament, told me to spread the rabbit ears wider, declared his intent to abandon professional card playing for a try at a veterinarian school at precisely the same moment that Staubach defeated the Miami Dolphins 24-3 in Super Bowl VI. 

Living in San Diego in the late 70’s and early ’80’s, I was caught up in Charger frenzy. Orchestrated by Coach Don “Air” Coryell, QB Dan Fouts, and receivers Charley Joiner and Kellen Winslow needed a minimum of 40+ points a game to have a chance to win. The Miami-Charger overtime gem in 1981, viewed in a bar in Pacific Beach with a gaggle of inebriated surfers, was an all time football high. I was hugging total strangers exhaling Miller High Life fumes and loving it. One week later the Chargers succumbed to Cincinnati in the infamous Ice Bowl and I fell into a deep fan abyss.

Football frenzy was destined to envelop my children. My older son was born on a day the Giants won. We exulted in the Giants two Super Bowl wins in the 21st Century and held on tight through Chargers wins and losses. My sons were there for the Charger playoff win over Indianapolis Colts, LaDanian Tomlinson’s record breaking rushing yardage game and the excruciating loss against the Jets in the 2010 first round playoff. 

As I tune into Super Bowl LVI this weekend, I will remember the rabbit ears, my father’s recall of QB Norm Van Brocklin and Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch of 1950’s Ram fame, the players of my youth and hope that the current and future players held in esteem by my children and children’s children will bring them the joy of the NFL fan.

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The Real Genie in Genealogy

As new grandparents, we await the wondrous moments of human development to flow into our much loved grandson. It has also awakened our curiosity of what lies ahead during his lifetime after we are a forgotten footnote of family lore. Sensing our own sense of evanescence, my wife and I embarked on the worldwide pursuit of genealogy. Who are our ancestors? What were their struggles?  What can we learn about the past that we can pass on to the future members of our family?

I strolled through the American Museum of Natural History and came across the hominid tree. Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens were primitive versions of modern man but broadly complex and contained too many branch points to fully understand and impossible, of course, to trace back to our grandson.  Lessons of life on the Serengeti may not be helpful in our grandson’s future. Consequently,  I narrowed the scope by 250,000 years by downloading MacFamily Tree 2019 and joining ancestry.com. 

Standing on the shoulders of prior family tree creators, I embarked on tracing my wife’s ancestors. A few clicks and I was back eight generations and landed in the 17th century in Scotland and Ireland. Her tree was historically stocked with five Revolutionary War heroes, an indispensable aide-de-camp of George Washington, and our 11th President, James Knox Polk. 

Documenting my dearly departed Ashkenazi Jewish brethren proved a more difficult challenge. I summoned wisps of memory from late relatives recalling a “Civil War soldier,”  an  “uncle with a battle injury,” and a “Wall Street merchant.”  The documents were sparse to non-existent until I summoned the meager Eastern European geography clues left in the U.S. census forms of my ancestors. One patriarch listed his origin as Poland Russia and emigrated to New York in 1865, returned to his native land and then returned again to the US in 1875 with a wife 30 years his junior. What were the circumstances that prompted this circuitous path? What made him leave the US so quickly after his perilous journey? Unlike my wife’s clearly documented centuries of ancestor life, including details of her Presidential cousin’s kidney stones in 1812, my great grandfather’s trail turned cold. Serendipitously, he showed up in a Civil War Archive as a private in the 41st Regiment in 1865. As a replacement soldier, he received $300 so that the wealthy could be spared the injury and death that the war bestowed upon its participants. His regiment consisted of European foreigners regaled in the New York press due to their “extensive experience” in wars fought in Eastern Europe. Their return to New York City in 1865, after 70% of the regiment had perished, was snubbed by the mayor who sent a city councilman to attend the ceremony. I could understand his return to  his native land and family after these events. But WHY did he return ten years later? History of Russian Poland filled in the explanation. Poland ceased to exist in 1795 and was carved up by the imperial powers of Russia, The Habsburg Monarchy (Austria) and Prussia. Numerous national uprisings against the occupying powers occurred in the 19th century. Russia was particularly brutal in suppressing the uprisings and singling out ethnic groups, especially Jews for punishment. The Pale of Settlement, enacted by Catherine the Great in 1791 and enforced by subsequent Tsars,  prevented Jews from migrating eastward to Russia and limited Jewish involvement in public life. Jews were forced to serve in Russian military service for 20 years and their children were coerced to participate in exchange programs with other ethnic families so that Jewish children could be “Russified” and  their Jewish heritage could be suppressed. With the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II in 1881, widespread pogroms that indiscriminately killed Jews were encouraged by the government.  Fascism, while not invented in Eastern Europe, thrived in the urban and rural areas.  This singled out the Jewish minority for the ills of society and excluded them from national life. Out of this maelstrom of terror and unrest came Jewish charity and unified cooperation amongst communities for survival and ultimately migration Westward.

With this background, my great-grandfather permanently emigrated to New York City. His children took jobs as clerks, shop girls, “fancy goods” peddlers and paper cutters.  One young relative was employed as a “lemon squeezer” in presumptively a bar. The family took in boarders to put food on the table. My great-grandmother, known to me when I was 8 and in the throes of advanced dementia, had many years earlier extricated herself from poverty and became a nurse-midwife.  Sacrifice for the family was evident when sifting through the detailed census information at the turn of the 20th century. Military records recorded service in the first and second World Wars with distinguished service and injuries incurred in battle.

Our hominid ancestors gave us upright walking, tools and reasoning. As my genealogy tree branched and diverted to other spurs, it became apparent that the accomplishments of my generation and my descendants had only been possible by the sacrifices and tribulations endured by my family. Gratitude, respect and knowing the inter-connectedness of the human condition is the take home lesson to  pass on to my new grandson who begins his story before our very eyes.

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Gasless in the Carolinas

Fayetville Gas

Roadtrip!” Visions of Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation and John Belushi’s scream of “Roadtrip!” in Animal House jumped into my consciousness. The reality was a 1,300 mile car trip up the I-95 to a bat mitzvah in New Jersey. Armed with Google Maps, hotel booking websites,  speed trap detectors,  streaming music services, several bags of M and M’s and 14 gallons of gasoline filling the tank assured me of a well-planned trip that could not be marred with concern or interruption.  I guided the Subaru SUV onto the steaming Florida Highway Interstate and headed North. 

Rumbling past Jacksonville (Named for Andrew Jackson, who knew?) and over the St. Mary’s River into Georgia, the motels and the Loblolly Pines blurred together as we approached the South Carolina state line. A few hundred miles later, my smart car, uttered in a distinguished Bostonian accent, “your fuel levels are low, shall I search for a gas station?” I pushed mute, left the I-95 in Fayetteville and was ready for a quick fill up in the nearest Circle K. Soon enough, a station appeared that was empty of cars but thoughtfully the pump handles were ensconced with plastic. This was a nice Covid protection, I thought. As I squeezed the pump handle with ever increasing pressure, the fuel gauge failed to engage.  My wife stuck her head out of the passenger side of the window, and exclaimed in that know-it-all-tone, “The plastic on the handle means they are out of gas. I reminded you 200 miles ago that a computer hack shut down the Colonial Pipeline and gas would be scare in the Carolinas.”  “It’s a big town, we’ll find gas,” I stammered. Confident that all that fracking, gulf oil reserves and the assurances of Colonial Pipeline execs would lead to a full tank down the road. 

My swagger started to fracture after four empty stations and a “skull and crossbones” emoji appeared near the gas gauge. Limping into a Red Roof Inn on less than one gallon, I anticipated a long layover, minutes from Fort Bragg and the U.S. Army Special Operation Command. Was there a way out? Scrolling down GasBuddy, multiple stations appeared with a slash across the gas tank indicating dead pumps.   Logging off the internet and onto the sidewalk, we hiked a mile up to the nearest 7-11 in search of up-to-date information on gas shipments.  My wife brought a wad of 20s with her in case bribing would be required. “A tanker was spotted five miles away heading toward a Circle K,” the cashier said in a slow Southern drawl. We coasted to our destination and got in line with 50 other cars desperately fighting for fuel. The hour wait was filled with mathematics and history flashbacks. What is the fuel volume delivered by the standard tanker divided by the autos ahead of us?   Memories of the Arab Oil Embargo and waiting for my 1/2 tank of gas with my even license plate was a returning visual in my mind.  Now, 43 years later, I could not think of how I would tell my younger self that I would be gas deficient four decades later due to rogue computer hackers. The moment had arrived, the pump inserted and the sweet distilled hydrocarbon liquid flowed into the tank. I peered to the side and saw a guy in military fatigues pumping gas into his Mustang. Could Special Ops storm Russia and unplug every hacking computer network? Not so easy. Another thought entered my mind from my pumping experience: the leaf controlled the dinosaur kingdom millions of years ago and now oil and gas clearly controlled a trip up the Eastern Coast and dictated our potential absence or presence at a bat mitzvah.

We rolled out of the Carolinas the following morning while tracking the gas gauge every 50 miles and filling up before the fuel gauge got below 3/4. Never take gas for granted!  Shortages of gas delivery and panic buying is a real American response. Perhaps, I thought in a rare moment of self-reflection, i should listen to my wife (who did tell me in December 2019 that a global pandemic was about to occur from a virus found in Wuhan China) regarding human behavior and its defensive responses under pressure and fear. Finally, bring on the electric cars!

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COVID and Nasal Memories

Pizza in my Olfactory Dreams

The Door Dash delivery was on the top of the steps, delivered from a  pizza service in San Diego that claimed “New York Style Pizza.” After the ritual disinfection of the pizza carton, the lid was lifted and I was delivered into another time and place. Scotty, the owner of a Queens pizza restaurant 60 years ago, was ensconced in my olfactory memory. He was flipping the dough as his octogenarian mother was lovingly molding a veal parmigiana hero that could make a grown man cry. Melted mozzarella, oregano, sausage and mushroom fumes reawakened a gustatory experience that I experienced for the first time, many years ago. With hops entering my nostrils from my Dad’s 1965 Miller High life, I left the COVID virus prison and entered a happier time when New York City  was a palace of gustatory delights and my childhood garden was in full bloom.

Through my nose, to the ethmoid sinuses, onto the olfactory epithelium and 60,000 smell neurons directed my pizza delivery directly to the frontal lobes and limbic system where Scotty’s still lived in vivid memory. This ecstatic experience is being stolen from millions by a renegade virus which has shut down the world for the last year. Expunging the smell and taste in some of the 25 million who have had COVID, which may have long lasting and permanent damage of the olfactory system. Malnutrition, depression and the loss of warning symptoms to natural gas leaks or tainted foods may be the legacy of sufferers of nasal COVID injury.

The least regarded of the five senses, smell and taste have taken a back seat in medical training and in popular culture. Medical school has few lectures on the proper function and diseases of smell and taste. Medical history taking neglects inquiry of one’s nasal and lingual capabilities. Olfaction has been a butt of jokes for generations of comics from the Simpson’s “smell you later”, Hawkeye Pierce’s ridicule on food sniffing in M*A*S*H and  Mel Brooks flatulence scene in “Blazing Saddles.” 

The dismissal of this forsaken sense is belied by its prominent location. The olfactory nerve, the shortest of the cranial nerves, sits in the front of the brain and sends projections to multiple areas including the emotional hub, the limbic system. Our evolutionary ancestors and current mammalian brethren rely on scent to distinguish friend from foe and food from poison. Our beloved canine, Millie, the Jack Russell Terrier from times past would apply the sniff test and rarely made a bad decision on food or domicile choices.

Obscure medical jargon has entered the mainstream with anosmia (lack of smell), parosmia (smell that fails to correctly match the odor) and phantosmia (phantom smells) appearing on long hauler COVID social sites. “Everything smells like burnt coffee” I heard a patient exclaim. “No longer can I taste the citrus in my tea,” another laments. “I ate a hamburger and I miss the onion smell and taste.” Essential oil kits are hawked on Amazon in the hope that olfactory re-education may hasten recovery. While the long term outcomes are not apparent in so recent a disease, it appears that up to 5% of smell sufferers may not  regain perception at 6 months.

“Don’t it always seems to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone,” Joni Mitchell’s ballad went in the ’60’s.  And so it goes with Scotty’s appetizing, fragrant pies from the same decade. Enjoy your senses and don’t forget to stop and smell the pizza.