True Wit

it is rare when one comes across true wit. but i have recently on two occasions.  While still in the hospital i convinced my occupational therapist that we should partake in a community outing - to take the bus to the central library in downtown LA. i am an avid reader, after all.  she agreed.  After researching the route and bus line we took off one fine spring morning and caught the downtown shuttle bus headed to the library.  I sat in between two  young therapists, both beautiful young ladies.  On the bus was an african american in his 30s.  I commented to him,
"what a great day, huh? here i am in between two beautiful young ladies.  What can be better than that," I rhetorically asked him.
Without pause and showing true wit he remarked in a deadpan manner, "a six pack of beer".
I had no reply.  I was stunned by his comment.

i get a glove

I get a glove

I was not born in the city of angels but it is  my adopted city.  Here I was raised, went to school, became a man.

I grew up in the  60’s in Echo Park, virtually in the shadow of  Dodger Stadium.  Some of my best childhood memories are walking to the ball game with my Dad and brothers to catch a game and watch some of the Dodger greats such as Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and so many more from the bleachers in left field.

Our home fronted Sunset Blvd. And  I clearly recall the big earth moving equipment roaring up sunset blvd. on the way to build the stadium and watching on TV the Mexican families being forcibly evicted from their homes in Chavez Ravine to make way for the stadium. Baseball became part of the lexicon of our family dinner table talk.  Especially when the hated Giants were in town to play our home town heroes.

      For me the next logical step as a boy was to play baseball on a team.  And so I signed up early one spring morning at the Echo Park playground to play baseball.  The coach called me on the phone to tell me when to report to the ball field for the first practice.  But there was one little problem; I didn’t have a glove.  When I mentioned this to my mom and dad they reminded me that there really wasn’t any extra money for frivolous expenses and that was definitely a non essential  item.

      What was I to do?  I went to my first practice without a glove, feeling out of place   All eyes were on me.  Everyone knew I was at baseball practice without a glove. :Que atrevido”. What nerve to show up to baseball practice without a glove?   

The coach couldn’t  help me.   He didn’t have an extra glove.  Neither did any of the other kids.  I tried to make myself invisible by standing in the background, all the while watching the baseball action intently.  After an eternity, practice was finally over.  The kids slowly went their own ways.  I hung around still mesmerized by the scent of the dirt infield and the symbols of baseball everywhere; bats leaning against the backstop, balls here and there, the catchers equipment slung carelessly around and a few kids lingering after practice to play  catch and run the bases.

      Something caught my eye at the end of one of the benches, a dark object lying on the bench.  I moved over to investigate.  Looking down I saw it was an old beat up baseball glove.  An old beat up glove.  I slipped it into my left hand. It fit perfectly.  Whose glove was it?  It had no name on it, it did have a lot of markings someone had done with a black permanent marker giving it a very beat up look. No one stopped or questioned me.  I walked home with the glove tucked under my arm.

At the next  practice I took my place at the warm up line with the other kids glove in hand, partnered up with my good friend George and warmed up my arm playing catch, starting at close proximity, then slowly moving farther away from each other just as coach had instructed us.

      Finally It was my turn at batting practice what we lived for. I grabbed the bat in my hands, caressed the smooth wood.  Examining it for any nicks or scratches, took a few check swings, then ambled up to the plate.  I was no longer some kid at the Echo Park playground.  I was Willie Davis about to hit, Ron Fairly about to homer.  I grounded out weakly to second base.

It has been a long love affair with baseball. I played high school ball at Cathedral High located next to the stadium, taught my 2 sons to play, coached ball at the Montebello YMCA for 12 years, teaching kids  the nuances of the game, some of whom are now adults and are good friends today.

In spite of the travesty of the McCourt ownership of the Dodgers today I still enjoy going to the stadium, hear the roar of the crowd, have a hot dog and be sure to swing by my childhood haunts of course.  Take in a ballgame,  have a hot dog, a beer and peanuts, root for the hone team and  recall the early days of baseball and  my youth in the city of angels, my adopted town.

time to conquer my fears

in sept. of 2006 i had a brutal stroke while in a cabin in the Sequoia National Forest. because of the stroke i had to retire from my job as a special education teacher in los angeles. had to quit my work as a community organizer, and basically curtailed all aspects of my life except for reading books on classic works of literature and history.  even the thought of going back to that place in the mountains would make me break out in a cold sweat. but i have decided enough is enough nd it's time for me to revisit that place of beauty and horror, in order to conquer my fear of a place. and so i am making plans to go back to that very cabin where i had the stroke, stand in the very room where i fell to the floor and was so close to death.  will i freak out?  will it be a positive experience.  i'm obviously not going alone. will need the support of my fam. and friends to do it but i am determined to do it, to conquer my fears.

i'm walking yes indeed i'm walking

i had a great day in phy. therapy today. i was able to walk 80 feet. yay. i had my a.f.o. on and i used a cane but it was me walking.  i know it was 80 feet cuz my therapist measured the distance.  a feeling of accomplishment.  course now i feel dead tired. but its a good feeling.
i havnt walked this much since before the car crash which took place last september, 2010 when i broke my left femur, 5 ribs and punctured my left lung. ouch

out in left field

Out in left field

The “insult to the brain” as a stroke used to be called affected many muscles on the left side of my body including those in my eyes.  I have what is known as left field neglect.  I often don’t see objects that appear to my left sphere of vision.  In the hospital  I often couldn’t  find my fork when it was placed on the left side of my tray.  If i have a tray of food before me I often didn’t eat food on the far left of the tray because i wouldn’t  see it.  When driving and I come to an intersection, my left peripheral vision is so poor, I have to force myself to turn my head to the left in order to see in that direction.  Sometimes this maladyalso affects my appearance. 

   About one year after my stroke a deep feeling of restlessness set in.  I felt I was wasting time, spending days and hours doing nothing.  I could feel despair setting in.  I decided to resume teaching.  I couldn’t return to work having resigned my post and filed retirement papers with the state but I figured I could at least volunteer at my former school for an hour or two a day.  And so I did.  I began volunteering at San Gabriel Elementary school in South Gate which was the last school I worked at as a Special Education teacher and from which I retired in 2007.

One morning, I was ready to go to San Gabriel  for my volunteer hours.  I was already in the car,My son Gilbert was behind the wheel when he turned to look at me.

“Dad, he says, you didnt shave the left side of your face!”

What? I say, so i grab the rear view mirror and turn it towards me.  Sure enough, my right side was cleanly shaven, but my left side was unshaven, full of whiskers and stubble.  “oh my, I say, good thing you caught it before we got to San Gabriel I would have scared the kids.  So I glumly went back inside to finish shaving.  That darn left field neglect.
here's a photo of me as a community organizer in the city of Maywood, next to Bell.

details of my stroke

On sept.22 of 06 I was in a cabin in the sequoia national forest with my wife, Martha. At about 6:30 am – I must have kept my watch on and glanced at it for I distinctly remember the time. I noticed my left arm and leg felt strangely heavy. So heavy I could not lift either limb. I sat up in bed and decided I was going to try to walk it off; I easily sat up on the bed, took one step and fell face first to the floor. Somehow Martha was able to get me up off the floor and sit me on the bed. Of course I still did not feel well as at that moment I was having a massive stroke though I didn’t know it at the time.  And so it was that one beautiful morning in a setting so beautiful even today it takes my breath away, that ultimate thing of mystery, death, came to me as I was lying in my bed next to my wife.  I obviously didn’t die.  I lived! I live today!  But I was in that realm teetering between life and death, yet  aware and curious about everything around me and  what was happening to me.  Was I dying?  Is  this what death felt like? I recall the sunlight streaming in through the window  hurting my eyes, so I turned my head to look away. The stroke had not yet affected my vision.  

                            the photos above are me in my prime; riding my motorbike and working it as a community organizer.

Trying to make sense of it I recalled my 3 hour hike of the day before.  I had been trying to reach the Kern River by clamboring over a ridge and following a stream that snaked its’ way towards the river which I could just see in the distance  – a slender strip of water glistening below.   And so I crossed the stream many times and scampered over and around rocks and boulders the size of cars.    It finally became clear to me I had totally misjudged the distance and was still hours away from reaching the river and so  I turned back to return to the cabin not having any desire to hike in the dark.

Without knowing it I must have injured my left leg which was why I was unable to move it I reasoned.  But what about my left armWhat other possible explanation could there be?  The horrific headache I had was a real concern to me so unlike any I had ever experienced before or since. I knew I was in serious trouble, probably dying but had the presence of mind to wake Martha as  I made a conscience effort to raise my head and look around, in so doing I wafted a silent goodbye to the world.  Death had come for me that morning or so I believed.  That effort is my last memory of that fateful morning.  I obviously did not die  but that day I had absolutely  no inkling of how my life would irrevocably change or the trials which lay ahead.

      Though I felt at deaths door, I recall a conscience effort to pull back, away from oblivion as I did not want to die, who does?  Today I wonder if that was simply a reaction or did I really realize the danger and therefore made the effort to live.At the same time I had a great curiosity about death. I took mental stock of myself. I was losing my vision, had lost the ability to speak.   Again  I tried to walk and again I fell.   Martha somehow got me off the floor,  again. Later she confessed it was pure adrenaline kicking in, like the stories we have heard of people finding superhuman strength at times of great crisis, of which this was undoubtedly one.  3 times I went down and 3 times Martha got me up off the floor.
    At that point I remember Martha screaming at me “Sal, you’re having a stroke, you're having a stroke she kept repeating. I wanted to tell her;

 “Martha, you’re one foot away from me, no need to scream, but the words would not come out.  Later when I asked her how she knew I was having a stroke.  She reminded me that she had seen her father have a series of strokes until he passed away from one as did my dad. Stroke is the 3^rd leading cause of death in the United States behind heart disease and cancer.  She told me I had all the classic symptoms she had seen before . – drooling at the mouth, slurred speech,  my face contorted, an inability to maintain balance, unable to lift a limb, etc.... she finally left me on the floor with a pillow and a blanket and went  off to get help. Lying on that wooden floor under a blanket I tried in vain to make sense of my situation.  Why couldn’t I move my left side? Unable to move I felt incredibly vulnerable like a molting crustacean.  Lying on that cold floor I could smell the pungent scent of early morning campfires in the air.  It seemed amazing to me that the people of the mountain could be carrying on with their normal day: preparing breakfast, planning the day’s activities, while I was immobilized in a most unnatural predicament.
Martha got to the security office who then radioed emergency services. When she got back to the cabin there just happened to be a young man walking by and she got him to come into the cabin, help me off the floor and into our car. He did us a great favor as I don’t see how we could have done it without help. I do not recall his name but later I said a prayer of thanks for him. By then we were informed that the ambulance was coming up the mountain.  Instead of waiting we decided to meet them half ways. And so we did. I remember I was slouched over in the front passenger seat as Martha was driving down the mountain but insisting to Martha that I could and should drive. She didn’t answer me; she just leaned over and  gave me a push so I wouldn’t slouch so much. We met the ambulance half way down the mountain. At that point my head, left arm and leg was throbbing with the most intense pain I had ever experienced.  At any moment I thought my head was going to explode.   It is clear to me now that I went into shock and so my memory of those events today is not good. They took me first to a small clinic in Lake Isabella and then to Mercy hospital in Bakersfield where I stayed in I.C.U. for one week and a half. Then I was transported by ambulance to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles where I stayed for 4 months Thank God for health insurance. We all should have it. Many of you visited me there though I have but little recollection of your visits. I would say to Martha, "hey so and so hasn’t visited me" and Martha would say yes he/she did when you were in ICU but that period is truly a hazy time for me now, what with the pain and the morphine injections I was receiving.  I just don’t have a lot of memory of my initial hospital stay.

      At the Good Samaritan I came into contact with good doctors some of whom I continue to consult with to this day and to very professional physical and occupational therapists involved with my physical rehabilitation who soon got me back on my feet and with whom I took my first tenuous steps leading to my eventual ability to walk again.
        “The body is silent but the spirit stirs” …Bill Hamelau.

      After a few days in the hospital I  inexplicably developed blood clots in each of my four limbs. The doctors would gather at the foot of my bed whispering to themselves but they couldn't figure out what was causing the clots or what had caused the stroke in the first place as I had never had high blood pressure or a bad cholesterol count. In fact I was in very good physical condition having run the LA marathon in 2002 and again in 2003 and was training for my 3^rd marathon.

        They finally decided to perform a DNA test, the results of which showed I had something  called “ factor 5 Leiden”, a hereditary condition whereby the blood in my body is predisposed to clot.  Now I take blood thinner medication to prevent clotting and will do so for life.
      My right carotid artery which supplies oxygenated blood to the brain  became completely blocked due to a large clot that  lodged there.  The cells in the right side of  my brain lacking the oxygen the brain requires began to die, severing the neuron connections from my brain to the left side of my body.

       I ended up not being able  to return to work as a Special Education classroom teacher opting  instead to take an early disability retirement.  I had to stop most of my community organizing work that was just beginningto show good results in Bell, Maywood and Cudahy, the southeastern portion of LA County.  This work is chronicled in a book by Jeffrey Stout: Blessed are the Organized, in which some of my exploits are mentioned.I recall the words of the bard Robert burns - the best laid plans of mice and men go often askew.   Stay tuned for chapter two – Left field neglect.

      The final chapter of this story is not yet written as I continue to work on my rehabilitation through a process of hard work and therapy.  It has been an arduous process of reinventing myself and certainly the most difficult experience of my life. Your comments are appreciated.