Repost #7 The Dead Woman in My Truck

Recently the subject of cremains and what to do with them has come up on Facebook and it reminded me of this story. Obviously, this was written when my dad was still alive and I was still married, just to avoid any confusion.

Original post August 5, 2006

I rode around with Erna's remains in my truck for quite a while. I honestly didn't mean to. I would have liked to have dumped her somewhere, anywhere, rather than drive with her daily. But Erna, in death as much as life, was hard to shake.

I don't remember exactly when Erna became one of my dad's patients. He always had one or two little old ladies that depended on him completely. He'd go grocery shopping for them and take them to appointments with specialists. The first of these was Mrs. Wildt, who crocheted me a baby blanket that I have to this day. The last, and perhaps greatest, was Erna.

Erna was a little old Italian lady. I didn't know her age, but I'd guess she was in her late 80's. Her husband had been dead for years, and had probably committed suicide if she was half the woman then as she was when I knew her. She'd call at all hours of the night; a hypochondriac that was dying. There's no worse kind. It's not like you could just tell her to suck it up, you aren't really sick, because in reality, she was inching closer and closer to death. But her complaints were only tangentially connected to her illness. And she didn't care who knew about them.

"My vagina hurts!" she told me over the phone. Only she didn't pronounce it vagina, she said "ba-gina."

"Ok, Erna... I'll tell Dr. Joe."

"My ba-gina hurts! Get Dr. Joe. I think I'm dying."

"Ok, Erna... You have to get off the phone so I can call him. He's not here."

"Oooooooh.... I'm dying." click.

That's how most of our conversations went. I sometimes went with my dad to see Erna in her little mobile home. She had no sense of privacy about her body and would often partially disrobe with me in the room in order for my dad to check her heart with his stethoscope. There we'd be. Erna with her sad, wrinkled breast resting in her lap. My dad asking her to take a deep breath... and again... and hold. Me sitting on the couch wishing I was anywhere but there and the motheaten deer head watching forlornly over the whole affair.

When I graduated high school I forgot about Erna for a couple of years. I'd moved out of state, but when I came back she was still there. Still calling dad's office and home whenever she felt a twinge of panic.

Then dad had a stroke. They didn't expect him to live. It started one morning in his office. He didn't feel very well and when he tried to get up out of his chair, he found he couldn't. I was living in an apartment above his office at the time and going to UCF. When I got back from class, there was a note on my door from his receptionist that said to meet my mom at the hospital. They never have determined exactly what it was. One neurologist thought it was a clot, while another believed it to be an unnatural constriction of the blood vessels to his brain stem brought on by high blood pressure.

He survived, despite the poor prognosis. He was on a ventilator for months and does physical therapy to this day. He never recovered any of his fine motor skills and is unable to walk.

While dad was still in the hospital, Erna was still dying. Without my dad, I think she finally decided that she didn't want to live anymore and she passed away a few months after his stroke.

While he was on the ventilator, my dad and I communicated via an alphabet board. I would run my finger down the letters and he would blink at the correct letter.

E
R
N
A
D
I
E
D

"I know," I told him.

I
N
E
E
D
Y
O
U
T
O
P
I
C
K
U
P
H
E
R
A
S
H
E
S

"Ok. But do you need anything?"

N
O

So I went to the funeral home and picked up a small box with her ashes. She had declined even an urn. She wanted her ashes to be spread in the ocean.

I retrieved them, but I was still busy with dad. I'd drive several hours daily to stay with him during the day at the rehabilitation facility. After a while, it just became another object in my truck: a cd case, books, and a box of Erna.

When I moved to Massachusetts I forgot about her. I had to leave my truck in Florida while I drove the moving truck north. My brother-in-law drove it up a couple of months later. I didn't tell him about the box.

We came back for a visit and my wife insisted I bring Erna. It was a busy time, visiting with everybody... checking on dad's progress which had noticeably slowed.

Our last day it was raining, but Britton insisted that we get rid of Erna. She wasn't driving back to Massachusetts with her. I didn't know what the big deal was. I'd been driving around with her for a couple of years by then. We drove to the Intracoastal and Britton got out with Erna's box and let her go off a pier. According to Britton, her last word was, "Bloooop."

Some might call it laziness... or indifference... or even passive aggressiveness. But I think my failure to let her go was something deeper. Maybe I was holding on to a time when my dad cared for people and wasn't cared for, a time when he was the most important person in the world to someone else.

A Press of Incredible Provenance

Once upon a time I entertained the thought of starting a private press using an old school letterpress. Let's be honest... I still do. So much so that I drove to Syracuse to pick up a Chandler & Price 10x15 letterpress, and later, a Pearl press.

Both of them now sit in my ex-wife's garage collecting dust.

Today I received an email which made me wish I was independently wealthy with plenty of ground floor studio space, or at least a loading dock and freight elevator. Jeff Dwyer is selling a press owned by the people who made me love letterpress and the black arts.

When I moved to Massachusetts, I answered an ad in the paper for a picture framer at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton. I figured it was the type of job that I could work around my school schedule. When I arrived for the interview, I took a quick look around the gallery and settled in front of shelves filled with some of the most amazing books I'd ever seen... books the like of which I'd had no idea actually existed. They were hand made art books, printed on letterpress in velvety ink crushed into the paper such that you could feel it as much as see it.

It was this chance encounter that introduced me to the world of printmaking... a world I sadly don't spend as much time in as I'd like. I was also able to meet the people who created these books, two of whom were Leonard Baskin and Barry Moser. The first I only knew briefly and never got to work directly with him. The second became a mentor and friend.

Vandercook & Sons, Inc. No. 2 Proof Press

This press has a long history of ownership and use by some America’s most accomplished fine letterpress alumni. After being manufactured in Chicago around 1935-36, it’s a mystery who owned it and where it was used for the next twenty years. Around 1958, Richard Warren, the owner of Metcalf Printing & Publishing Co. in Northampton, MA gave the press to his friend, Leonard Baskin when Baskin moved his Gehenna Press from Worcester, MA to Northampton. In the summer of 1958, Baskin employed Harold P. McGrath as his pressman for the Gehenna Press, and McGrath continued using the press at Gehenna until 1976. While the press remained in use by McGrath, under his guidance probably more than a hundred young apprentices studied the craft and learned to print. In 1976, the press was moved from Gehenna to its new home at the Hampshire Typothetae at 30 Market St. in Northampton. For the next ten years, McGrath and Barry Moser used it for Moser’s Pennyroyal Press productions. When the Hampshire Typothetae closed and Pennyroyal Press assumed ownership of the Typothetae printing equipment, the press traveled to Linseed Road in West Hatfield, MA. Around, 1987, Moser sold all of the Gehenna/Typothetae/Pennyroyal printing equipment to Alan James Robinson and the Vandercook moved yet again to Easthampton, MA. Harold McGrath followed the equipment out the door, and he continued to use the press until 1998 when Robinson sold it to Elizabeth O’Grady. She moved it to New Hampshire where it has rested quietly. At some point during the years on Market Street, the cast iron drum handle was broken and a welded repair was made. The press is available for $2,500.00. It weighs approximately 675 pounds, and professionals should move it. This price does not include moving or shipping costs. Additionally, also available for $500.00 is a twenty-four-drawer type bank with assorted sizes of Caslon foundry type. Pictures of the press and type bank are available. Contact Jeff Dwyer at (413-5840761) or e-mail at: jpdwyer@dwyerogrady.com


I hope it finds a good home with the kind of person who understands just how many wonderful things it has seen. Good luck, little Vandy.

On Turning Five

A fifth birthday is unique. It's the birthday when you truly start becoming who you will be. On your birthday I give you five things to carry with you the rest of your life. They are for when I am no longer here to guide you.

First is a piece of coquina rock. It is to remind you that you will always be, like me, a Floridian. We are different and special. Look at this rock and remember my stories, and those that my father told me.

The next two things you will find are a pencil and a pen. The pencil, in order to write down those things that will change, and the pen to write down those that are constant. You will be tempted to use the pen. You will hold it in your hand and set it to paper often. Always use the pencil.

The fourth thing you will find is a length of string. It is long enough, trust me. The string is to gather up that which is scattered... those things for which you search and find only rarely. You will use it bring these things together and make them useful to you.

The fifth, and final thing you will find is a prism. It's to remind you of beauty which is hidden in plain sight.

Superstition

I'm not superstitious by any means, but when I'm taking eye pressures, and the patient is a pain in the ass, I'll record 13 mm Hg if it is 12 or 14.



Image courtesy RootAtlas.com

An observation at brekkies

This plate makes everything taste like sadness and ketchup.