JIM D. & ME pt 4 (reprise)

well...after 2 million 100 2 thousand 400 minutes...the nightmare that

at least half the country and the rest of the planet with a function'n brain cell has had to suffer thru like a undiagnosed beyond mentally deranged STD has F-I-N-A-L-L-Y been inoculated and cured...unfortunately there was a COMPLETE CODE RED MOMMIE DEAREST meltdown with the other half of the Jethro Clampett-Maury Povich hemmorrhage'n-drano douche'n-dip shitt'n-tin foiled capp'n-syphillis cheerlead'n-diabetic dorito's...

well...BOO FUCK'N HOO!

click fer pt 1      click fer pt 2        click fer pt 3

We always had a ramp at the back of our house so he was able to go

and come by himself. He bought a house, refurbished it and rented it to students. He was always trying something new.

He took lessons on the accordion and i can still hear him playing "The Blue Skirt Waltz" on our front porch. He also managed to do income tax for a myriad of people.

One day while riding in his car the driver took a sharp turn which resulted in the wheelchair being thrown against the side of the van. This resulted in a broken left shoulder for my son. (Doubly bad as he was left handed.)

He managed to keep on with his income tax work by moving his desk near our front door and installing a phone there. In that way he was able to answer the door and save me the trouble of coming in every time anyone knocked. He had a steady influx of people coming.

I remember the last two days before April 15th he had worked through two nights and days getting  the papers ready for latecomers. At ten bells the night of the fifteenth he went to bed exhausted after the last person had picked up their taxes. At ten minutes of twelve the phone rang. I answered it and the woman said she wanted to ask my son a question. I told her i was not about to wake him after all he had gone though and I asked her

"Why did you wait so long?" Her reply was "I don't know".

He died at age 44 of a blood stream infection. He told me before he died there was so many things he still wanted to do. One was to go to Australia.

The mortician informed me after his death that the sac had attained a weight of 40 pounds. Can you imagine carrying that on your shoulders?

I don't have any specific claim to fame but I do get a great deal of satisfaction out of knowing I was able to help my son having as near

normal life as was possible under the circumstances. Years after his death i was watching Rev. Robert Schueler on the TV on Sunday. He in the course of his sermon, enumerated the three kinds of love. The third kind drew my attention. It was "I loved you because you needed me."

A light went on in my mind and I realized why the bond had been so strong

between my son and me. HE NEEDED ME.

Viola Mohan

my grama took care of me durin' my ever change'n teenage gender bender'n angst riddled years...as she did with my other siblin's and cousins as well as her grown kids durin' her lifetime...without make'n me 

feel any different than someone who was walk'n down the street with a peg leg or a glass eye (unlike many others that did at the time) with a warm place to crash when needed or just warm conversations when wanted...the matriarch of our large irish family...Viola passed away peacefully in her sleep at home in 1993 at the age of 87...always young at heart with an open heart...you will always be in mine

hope you enjoyed this epic rerun as much as much as i loved relive'n it

now GET OFF MY DRESS!

JIM D. & ME pt 3 (reprise)

you never REALLY know how much yer addicted to all the social

media out there...til yer NO LONGER able to shove yer salted opinion down the throats of the masses that are sitt'n on their cottage cheeto asses...but there i was last week...locked out from FB fer 24 hrs after comment'n on some anal burps post regard'n the dasturdly and highly unpatriotic assult on the capital and his justification of it...to which i do believe i DID NOT harrass or bully...i just merely gave him a suggestion by tell’n him to take a bath with his blender...THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

though you know it's bad when TWITTER shitters attack...NO ONE IS SAFE (so i outta count my bless'ns i suppose)

click here fer part 2  click here fer pt 1

and now...episode 3 of JIM D. & ME (reprise)

That same year he was chosen as "Young Man of the Year" by the local

 Junior Chamber of Commerce and received a plaque which hangs on our living room wall. 

He was re-elected, without opposition, in 1959.

All this time I had to lift him in and out of bed.

When he became to heavy for me to handle he invested in a mechanical lift which saved my poor aching back. Later the other leg would be amputated due to poor circulation. (His feet and legs never grew like normal children.) Then we had to devise ways to make him presentable as

 he was constantly going out with his numerous friends. We obtained two legs off store manikins, put socks on them and inserted them into oxfords that were fastened to the step of the wheelchair. (Remember we were on a tight budget.) Then his trousers could be pulled on over the legs and he was set to go. He always bought nice sport coats, shirts and ties as he liked to look well.

In the fall of 1960, while still Alderman, he ran for State Representative but was defeated. He ran again for Alder-man-at-large in the spring of 1961 but was defeated. By this time he had taken to signing himself as Jim D. and that is the way he is known to most of the people around town.

We managed to buy a home and he was always buying me something. When some of his brothers married and had children he enjoyed his nieces and nephews, doing fun things with them.

The sac grew and grew and soon filled the width of the wheelchair. This made the tire of the right wheel rub on the sac and cause an open sore. I was alarmed and called my doctor. He told me to wash it with soap and warm water. I did this and it healed to our relief. After that we were forced to fill in the sides of the wheelchair with metal plates so as to avoid such a 

thing recurring. His seven year old business has grown and he now has a complete home improvement deal: windows, doors, awnings, canopies and even siding of aluminum as well as steel doors and windows. He does income taxes for others during the months that his home improvement business is slowest: January, February, March and up to April 15th.

Through all the ups and downs he has experienced he has always kept his head and remained a very friendly and witty personality. My husband had died nine years ago and since then I have depended on Jim for a lot

of advice and counsel when i had problems to solve. Jim is now thirty three years old and the sac fills the entire width and depth of the wheelchair causing him to sit at the front edge. I do not know what the future has in store for us nor do I want to know. I certainly cannot complain about the past. I think God has been very good to Jim D. and me. As anyone can plainly see, things could have been a lot worse.

tune in next week for the conclusion of JIM D. & ME pt 4 (reprise)

now GET OFF MY DRESS!

JIM D. & ME pt 2 (reprise)

she can bring home the bacon…she can fry it up in the pan…though bein'

speaker of the house for the past 110 years barely gave NANCY PELOSI any real time to enjoy the fruits of her labor…so i was elated when she got a breather over the weekend and found time to text me a pic of her latest hunt'n excursion

click here fer pt.1 of JIM D. & ME

and now...episode 2 of JIM D. & ME (reprise)

He managed to finish the eighth grade in the country and then we moved to town. We were not very well off financially so we all tried to do things to help out. My husband held a very low paying position as a maintenance 

man. My son was always innovative and he started out making little plaster of Paris dogs, painting them and selling the same. Jimmy was at home most of the time and did taxidermy work to pass the time away and to make a little money. We tied tags for the Easy Washing Machine company and my wheelchair bound son could outdo us all. 

He would tie a tag and carelessly throw it aside on the table, later on putting them in order, while i would fit the tags neatly in a pile. Needless to say his method was better.

We then stuffed envelopes for various companies. We did not realize that we could have used a sponge to moisten the flaps so at lunch time we did not savor our food too well due to the taste of the glue on our tongues. If i remember correctly, we received $6 a thousand for the tag tying and we did thousands and thousands.

Gradually boys started stopping by to talk to him on our front porch and before my husband and me knew what was happening, he was being 

taken places by these same boys. Soon after we moved to town my husband died.

Over the years we had accumulated eight boys and one girl. My son decided to go to business college getting there under his own power as the college was only a few blocks away from our home. He finished a

 course in bookkeeping and soon had a job working for a beverage concession. He became a great baseball fan. One summer he took on the concessions at the ball park and with the money he made there, plus $1500 he borrowed, he decided to go into business for himself. He was working as a bookkeeper yet but he figured he and his friend who co-signed with him could do this new business part time.

He was unusually bright and went into business with a friend selling combination windows. His friend contributed the use of his garage and the two of them made up aluminum windows and sold them. When this friend was transferred to another town, a fellow bought out his share and he and Jim kept up the business. They did well at that and he then branched out into aluminum siding. After a while the friend too left and Jim bought him out and continued to operate the business. He had to hire men to put the windows on the houses but he did the selling himself, being driven around by various fellows who had a little spare time and wanted to make a little extra money.

From there he went to a motor firm and it was while he was there he bought his first panel truck and hired a young man to drive him. He had to

stay in the wheelchair even when in the truck and he did not attempt to drive himself but it seemed he never wanted for drivers. Of course he had plenty of brothers if no one else was around. They were more than glad to drive Jim (it had come to Jim by now) and could go most any place he wanted to go.

He made several trips, one to the World's Fair in Canada. His sister and her husband went along to take care of his needs. He made friends easily and always had a bevy of young fellows willing to help him.
 
He even had run for Alderman-at-large and was elected to the Council in our fair city of 25,000 in 1957. He held that job several years.

I neglected to mention that Jim had developed a tropic ulcer on the side of his right leg and in January of 1958 the leg had to be taken off above the knee. He was laid up for a little over a month and then was back in the harness again.

tune in next week for part 3...now GET OFF MY DRESS!

JIM D. & ME pt 1 (reprise)

after that warm and fuzzy new years in front of the microwave

oven work'n on yer 5th bag of radioactive styrofoam marinated in yellow dye #5 sludge coated with just enough iodine crystals to cause yer blood pressure to blast into the outer limits of space just like yer grama used to make as you OD on the latest covid marathon you’ve seen fer the umpteenth time...

it made me think about the many bowls of Orville that i scarfed down with my grama VIOLA while watch'n endless reruns that i never got sick of and could almost recite word fer word at this point...like

"HAZEL" "GOLDEN GIRLS" and "MURDER SHE WROTE"

to this day i OD on these shows and think back on simpler times and had

decided it was time to fer me to have the simplest complex mini vaca from my ramblins' so i could restart my engine and figered i would take the month of jan off (why not!) to address more press'n matters at hand and rerun a blog i ran 5 years ago that was written by the matriarch of our diminish'n irish and not-so-catholic-anymore family...my grama Viola...written pre-blog world in her own words...it gave me a sense that some treasures are worth repeat'n...so see you in feb with all new hard hitt'n nagg'n nonsensical words of wisdom...this is a 4 part series...enjoy!

early on march 1, 1929 our third child was born.

It had been a very difficult birth. I was still groggy from the sedation so all the nurse told me was that I had a 9lb. 10oz. son then wheeled me back to my room for a much needed rest.

My mother and husband came in to see me and i remarked "You both look as though you have seen a ghost." She replied that she supposed they were tired from the long vigil and for me to try and sleep.

They were spared giving me an answer as later the head nurse came into my room, put her arms around me and said "There is something wrong with your baby."  She explained there was a sac at the base of the spine and mentioned the term Spina Bifida. I had never heard of the word. I was young and did not realize just what she was telling me
(how ignorant one can be at 24).

I figured it was some small thing that would be outgrown in time.  She explained there was an opening between two vertebrae and that the spinal fluid pushed out into a sac at the base of the spine. I remember asking her if it would be more noticeable as he grew up. She replied that it would not. I know she was trying to spare my feelings and in a way I am thankful she did not make me realize the seriousness of the defect.

Later when my son was brought to me I peeked down the back of his 

diaper and saw the sac, about the size of my closed fist. We took my son home at the end of my stay in the hospital but first we had him baptized in the hospital chapel as our doctor advised, saying that sometimes these children did not live long.

We had a fifteen months old boy at home (we had lost our first baby, a girl) and realized he was paralyzed from the waist down. For some reason I did not panic but took care of him as i had my other child and things went along from day to day much as they had before. We had named the new baby James Donald but from the first, he was Jimmy to everyone.

At first the sac was the size of my two fists and did not present too great a problem when he was carried about. As he grew older the sac grew so we made several trips to the Mayo Clinic with Jimmy hoping something could be done but the answer was always the same "good home nursing" and each time the doctors there would advise us to "postpone the operation".

As he grew the sac also grew and soon it became more cumbersome. I then devised a harness and binder of muslin to enable the weight to be taken up by his shoulders and this worked out very well. His legs had been paralyzed from the start and could not be in any but a sitting position. Jimmy started pushing himself around the floor on his little

bottom with his legs held out in front of him. This gave me an idea. I figured out a way for him to get around and my dad was able to carry out my idea. I designed a sort of cart which we called the kiddie car. It was in the shape of a horse shoe but with a solid center.

My father made a low cart, just inches off the floor with swivel castors at the back and an axle with two 8 inch wheels at the front, this enabled him to wheel himself around the floor. This developed his arm muscles so he could scoot around amazingly fast. Jimmy could wheel himself around the floor faster than his brother could walk.

We always had to be on the lookout that he was not injured as it would

not take too great a blow to rupture the sac. The years went by and eventually he graduated to a wheel chair and soon it was time for Jimmy to go to school. We lived in the country the first fourteen years of his life and i was able to wheel him to school as the schoolhouse was on our property. He attended school just afternoons and I would push him there and then go get him. The neighbor children offered to push him over but i was always afraid someone would tip him over on the rough ground. He did fine in school and made a lot of friends.

Sometimes in the winter the snow presented a problem and I would tie a rope onto the front of the wheelchair and two of his brothers would pull while I pushed through the drifts. Clothing also was a problem as he was incontinent and I had to figure out a way to avoid the soiling of his trousers. I ripped the back seam of the pants down and then cut over to the side seam making sort of wings on the sides of the pants. He sat on a large cushion with a thick pad under him. His belt went through the loops of the pants and held them in place. He always had a large pillow across his back to protect the sac and to give his back some support.

to be continued next week...now GET OFF MY DRESS!