personal – Page 2 – shoutforjoy.us

April 2016

In the end of March into April of 2016, I had stroke-like symptoms for about a week. I was miserable. I kept on thinking it was just another complex migraine. I couldn’t sleep. I was hyper-alert at times. One side of my body was weak and didn’t work properly. I finally drove to Grand View Hospital’s ER on Monday, April 4. They took my vitals, extracted some blood, scolded me for driving myself to the ER, and for waiting through a week of stroke-like symptoms. They examined me and determined that it did appear that I was having a stroke. Then they proceeded to ignore me for five hours: no food, no water, no vitals, no meds, no monitor. They told me I was going to be admitted. I finally caught an orderly who found a couple of sandwiches and some water for me. The kitchen was already closed. I ate the meat and cheese out of the sandwiches and threw away the bread. Part of migraine prevention is a low carb diet. All of my strokes and multiple TIAs (transient ischemic attacks or “mini-strokes”) have been caused by migraines.

I took my own drugs and supplements with the water. Finally, I got up to leave. I said in a loud voice that I would be more comfortable at home and they could call me when they were ready to admit me. A nurse immediately told me they were ready and scrambled to find a wheelchair and took me up to the telemetry unit on second floor. They kept me for five days and did every kind of heart test I have ever heard of, along with a CT scan and MRI of my brain with and without contrast. Of course, I was on a monitor the whole time. The brain scans showed no evidence of new stroke damage, so it was determined that it was another TIA, my 42nd. Even though all of my strokes and TIAs have been migrainous, they did one last heart test, an echo-cardiogram. It revealed that my aortic valve was in bad shape. They found that it had been damaged by the infection that had attached to my spine in 2010. My cardiologist, who was doing the test, asked me why I didn’t know about this before. I said, “I’m not the one doing or reading the tests! How am I supposed to know anything?” He told me I would need to have it replaced. He didn’t think it was that urgent. He recommended I go to Lehigh Valley Hospital Center.

There are two reasons I would not go to Lehigh Valley. In 1993, when a truck hit me when I was on my Honda Helix, the ambulance took me to their ER. The doctor in charge that day happened to be a hand specialist. He kept looking at my hands to see what he could fix there. There were only minor scratches there. It was my hip that was shattered! They X-rayed my right hip, then had me stand up on it. I screamed in pain. They gave me crutches and another Percocet and told me to “buck up”. I hobbled out of the ER to ride home in excruciating pain in our compact car. I stayed on the couch that night. The next day, Lehigh Valley ER called me and asked me if I had pain in my hip. I said, “No shit, Sherlock!” They told me they had looked at the X-rays again and it looked fractured. They asked me to come back to the ER to get a scan. I asked why should I come back there and would I be seen immediately. They said they would take care of me and I would not have to wait. I arranged for a neighbor who had an old Lincoln to drive me up there, because I couldn’t bear folding myself into our Justy again. They made me wait all day long, lying on a gurney, in pain, in the ER, before they finally got around to me. Then they had the nerve to send a bill with a second ER charge! The other driver’s insurance was paying all of my expenses, but I would not sign off on that second ER charge! Lehigh Valley kept trying to bill for it. They finally called me and said, “What do you care? The other guy’s insurance is paying it.”

I replied, “Now, you really have me angry! You made a mistake, sent me home on a shattered hip socket on crutches. Told me to ‘Buck up’ ignoring my exquisite pain, and you want to get paid a bonus?! When my car mechanic screws up, and forgets to do something or damages something, he eats it. You don’t get to just get paid more for making a mistake! Do you want me to hire a lawyer and see where this goes, or do you want to just forget the second ER charge?” They removed the charge.

The second reason I didn’t want to go to Lehigh Valley was that I wanted to go to HUP, because my stroke specialist and neurologist were connected there. There is public transportation to Philadelphia. I have a lot of friends in Phila., and they have a long, national reputation for excellence in heart surgery.

When I was discharged from Grand View on April 8, as the nurse’s aide was helping me out the front door and into our car, my left side was numb and unresponsive. She was alarmed and questioned whether I should be leaving. She was concerned that I may be having a stroke. I assured her that they had done every possible test for that. I had been experiencing symptoms like this for about ten days. It is just an atypical migraine and they’re kicking me out.

I did not waste any time making an appointment at HUP.

Demonic Attack?

As I sit in our living room waiting for the sunrise, with the right side of my neck covered in steri-strips over just under my partially shorn beard, the still painful reminder of last week’s right carotid endarterectomy, my mind goes not to the ER visit that led to this particular knife fight, but to my first ever trip to an Emergency Room. I was four years old. I was playing in the sandbox, next to the garage, behind our little Dutch colonial on Shoreline Drive in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. My sister, Sue Ann, was swinging on the swing set, which our neighbor, “Grandpa” Olson had made for us. I ran right under the swing and the exposed end of a bolt on the bottom sliced my scalp, right in the middle of the top of my head. I stumbled, then got up, screaming, and ran, bleeding profusely, to our backdoor.

Grandma Ingham was visiting. She grabbed the beautiful afghan she had knit for us, wrapped me in it and scooped me up. I asked her why the afghan. She said it was to protect me against shock. I didn’t understand. It was the middle of summer. Why would I possibly need an afghan? I couldn’t believe she used this and risked it getting all bloody. At the same time, I felt honored and comforted: honored, that she was willing to spend something so precious, that represented so many hours of work, on me; comforted, because it was softer and less itchy than any of our blankets. My mom grabbed her keys, and sent Sue Ann, Alison and Tic over to the Ericsons. I rode in my Grandma’s arms to North Memorial Hospital’s emergency room in our brand new 1959 Pontiac station wagon. The doctor handed me a spool of black suture thread to play with, to distract me, while he stitched up my scalp. He must have used a bit of a local anesthetic, because I remember it just sort of tickled a little while he was working up there. Then we went home.

Thankfully, my blood washed out of that beautiful afghan.

Now, why does my mind go to this when I started out thinking about Sunday’s visiting nurse asking me, “Have you ever considered you may be under demonic attack?” while I was opening the three window shades on the southeast front of the house in the dark? I’m just three months shy of 64 and I can recall those scenes from 60 years ago as if they happened earlier today. Part of me is still that spastic, precocious four year old. And, the nurse asked that irrelevant question after I had already told her I was an atheist. I also explained that when I believed in God, I didn’t fear demons. “The only power they had were lies.” Twisted people were another matter. I didn’t fear them enough to modify my actions, but I received my share of threats. A Mennonite pastor threatened to kill me. The Fruit of Islam leader at Graterford Prison put out a hit on me at one point. A gang of street punks threatened me. A high ex-offender took me from my day job at gunpoint to drive him to a rehab. Bishops, priests and pastors of every stripe slandered me, lied to me, and bullied me. Police under four different mayors of Philadelphia harassed and threatened me. This was just part of my job of serving the poor.

Of course, she was talking about my health history: the mysterious infection on my spine, the vancomycin causing kidney failure, then Stevens-Johnsons Syndrome, the six strokes, the atypical migraines, the 47 TIAs, the damaged aortic valve, the allergy to 12 meds, etc. I don’t think it was demons. I think it was more likely that my shell was softened when I was a young eagle by the spraying of DDT over our house and yard to kill the mosquitoes in the swamp at the end of our backyard. Every day is Earth Day. See what I did there. That was a Rachel Carson reference. Does your brain work that way, or is it just me?

The sunrise was beautiful!

Tricky Chicky strikes again!

Last summer, as I was painting the Birds of Perkasie mural, many people stopped by to say Thank You. A few even left gifts and cards on my chair or among my paints for me, including cash. One lady left a birdseed bell with a note. She signed it “Tricky Chicky”. When I was around town or at the pool, people recognized me and said Thank You. Perkasie is a friendly community.

Yesterday, we received an envelope decorated with stars and and stickers. It was addressed “For the beautiful bird painter”, to our former address (the site of the mural). The mailman knew who it was for and got it to our new address, on Ridge Ave. It contained a card, decorated with bird stickers, that read:

Hello, Mr. Bird Painter!
I got you this gifty for the holidays but never got it in the mail so I’m sending it for Valentine’s Day instead. That’s probably more appropriate anyway because I love your beautiful bird wall! Yay! You lit up your little corner of the world & I appreciate it so much!
Thank you!
tricky chicky

Enclosed with this card was a $30 gift certificate to The Perk. My wife and I went there for lunch, today. It was a real treat! Since we moved and I have had so many health issues, we haven’t been able to pay all of our bills, much less go out. We each ordered about $9 meals, so we could leave a proper tip with the remainder. The food was excellent and generous portions.

Thank you, Tricky Chicky!

Medicare Is Not Socialism!

I am sick of these stupid memes that show trucks plowing snow with some text about socialist snowplows. This plays into the far right agenda to remove all government programs designed to help society as a whole. There is nothing socialist about the snowplows. The drivers don’t own them. In most cases they aren’t even unionized. They are keeping roads open so all of the workers can still get to work to make money for their corporate overlords.

Yesterday, I was attacked on Facebook, on a post about my 46th TIA (mini-stroke) by my cousin Sally’s husband, a self-identified “capitalist pig”. He asked if I was concerned about who was paying for my ER visit, since I have Medicare. He sells insurance. He told me that he was challenging my “ridiculous socialism”. At first I responded with, “I paid plenty, with Medicare payroll taxes my entire working life and with a monthly premium out of my disability now, plus the deductibles and copays, prick!” I mean, I just came home from the ER recovering from my 46th TIA, my third in the last three weeks, and he decides to “friend” me to take stupid potshots?! I then blocked him and deleted his comments. I don’t need the stupidity, the judgment or the drama right now. He called his wife, his children and his grandchildren “capitalist pigs”, as well. I don’t think it was very kind of him to call my cousin Sally a pig.

Medicare is not socialism. Some Republicans tried to brand it as such when it was being proposed, just as they did Social Security before that. Neither program involves workers seizing the means of production, so, by definition, they are not socialism. This is just old-fashioned, McCarthyist red-baiting. The GOP also lies about the insolvency of the misnamed Social Security Trust Fund. If GOP presidents had not stolen trillions of dollars from it for useless wars over oil, it would be solvent for decades to come. If the Social Security tax were not regressive and Social Security itself acted like a true insurance, as in, it was means tested, it would be solvent indefinitely. Both programs were created by capitalists.

How does this benefit capitalism? Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to advocate for universal health coverage from a position that no country can have a strong economy with a sick workforce. Eisenhower, another GOP president, certainly not a socialist, advocated for universal, free healthcare for children. He was hoping that the universal free distribution of the polio vaccine would serve as a pilot for such an initiative. His reasoning was manifold. Children cannot choose whether they are born into a family that can afford healthcare or one that can’t. He felt that it is undemocratic and a denial of the American credo of “all men being created equal” to not at least provide healthcare to all children, if not all people, who need it. Also, providing healthcare to all people helps save money and reduce pain and sickness for all by limiting contagion and preventing diseases and injuries from creating worse problems long term. It also saves a ton of money by eliminating the billing and collections process and all those bonuses to insurance executives for denying care, not to mention all those wasted advertising dollars. This has been the experience of all of the civilized countries, which have universal healthcare. (Most of these are social democracies, as opposed to the US which is an anti-social oligarchy, listing toward fascism.) These conditions produce a more productive workforce. This is a capitalist value.

Social Security was introduced in the midst of two world wars. Traditionally, children take care of their parents as they age and can no longer care for themselves. Wars are a capitalist venture. Weaponry and war is the US #1 export and budget expense. The world wars, followed quickly by the Korean War and the Vietnam War, etc., left a lot of parents without children to support them. So Social Security is a program to share that burden somewhat among the whole nation. The truth of the matter is that money does not keep. Money is just a means of exchanging labor. Another GOP president, Abraham Lincoln, said it, “Labor creates all wealth.” It is said that money is denatured manhood and denatured womanhood. Social Security creates the illusion that one lives on one’s own resources in retirement. No one does. Everyone who no longer works lives off of the labor of others. Social Security and Medicare and various private insurances are social contracts that try to preserve the illusion of self-sufficiency which is an essential myth necessary to prop up capitalism.

Next time someone tries to tell you the fire company or highways are socialist, remember Ben Franklin established the first free public library and organized the first fire companies, and helped lay out the grid pattern of roads for the westward expansion of the US. He also was a strong believer in capital exploiting labor to generate wealth, as in The Franklin Fund, etc. Also, when Brian Brady tries to sell you insurance, don’t buy it. He will try to make you feel guilty if you ever dare to use it.

My 44th and 45th TIAs

On Tuesday, January 29, 2019, I woke up with my right hand numb and part of the right side of my face numb. I have had six strokes starting in June 2011 through October 2012. They were determined to be migrainous strokes as they started with my atypical migraines and I was found to have a very unusual configuration of small arteries, along with some missing ones that normally would supply the right side of my brain. All of the strokes and most of the TIAs occurred in my right parietal and temporal lobes. The doctors at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) concluded this was due to the tiny arteries that fed these lobes, without any cross artery to the left side, would catch tiny clots that were thrown loose by the disturbance of the migraine. Prior to 2019, I had experienced 43 Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAs or “mini-strokes”). This is my count. The MRIs don’t show individual TIAs well, but they do show damage done by multiple TIAs in the same spot or spots. I have atypical migraines. This means that many times they present with unusual aura and symptoms. Typical aura for migraine is partial loss of vision, or visual disturbance, on one side for about a half hour followed by intense pain on the opposite side of the head. These can be accompanied by hyper-sensitivity to light or sound, nausea and mood changes often including a desire to be alone.

Many migraineurs also notice a prodrome, which can last for as long as 48 hours before the aura presents. This is that uneasiness that something is not right like a premonition of something bad about to happen. Some do not notice their own prodrome, but their friends and relations notice it about them. They behave differently; more subdued or more irritable or more agitated than usual. Once the headache (which can last for as little as a half hour to several days) passes, it is usually followed by the postdrome or “migraine hangover“. Like the nickname implies, it can include fatigue, uneasy stomach, feeling totally washed out. It can last for a couple of days.

What makes a migraine atypical is everything from a variety of very strange aura to additional debilitating symptoms during the headache itself, including impaired vision, vomiting, diarrhrea, sinus pressure, body pain, balance issues and eye or tooth pain. I have had migraines that lasted for up to two weeks at a time. I follow an intense protocol to prevent migraines, since mine cause strokes and TIAs. Many migraineurs are triggered by specific things. A lot of people have the mistaken idea that some of these triggers are universal to all migraineurs. For example, sulfites in red wine is a fairly common trigger, but not everyone is affected by them. Also, a person’s triggers can change several times throughout their life. People can have migraines during various times in their lives, with long migraine free periods between. A possible ray of sunshine is that those who experience classic migraine live longer on average than those who don’t. Of course, it may be like the runner’s dilemma. A study showed that the average added life expectancy for a runner is roughly equal to the cumulative hours in their life they spent running. The lesson there is: don’t run unless you enjoy it.

Now back to my story. I have had “Gumby vision” and “Picasso vision” as aura to horrific migraines. The summer of 2011 I had only eight days without debilitating migraines. I had three hospital stays and one ambulance transfer to Philadelphia (HUP). Some of the migraines lasted almost two weeks. It was during this time I had my first several TIAs. They were recognizable to me and my family as they caused temporary deficits that outlasted the pain, that were the same as if I had had an ischemic stroke: weakness on one side of my body, word salad, uneven smile, etc. Dr. Scott Kasner, one of the top stroke specialists on the east coast, prescribed the Jefferson University Hospital Headache Center’s regime to help prevent migraines. It is a combination of herbal supplements and drugs. We have tweaked it a number of times to individualize it for my peculiar drug allergies and tolerances. It has given me many migraine free weeks and even months. Even so, I have experienced a total of 45 TIAs and three more small strokes, for a total of six.

I woke up with the 44th TIA occurring on January 29, as I stated above. I sat this one out at home. It took two days for the symptoms to pass. I figured we know what is causing them. They don’t leave any permanent damage; I can handle this. This turns out to be only partly true. A TIA can leave permanent damage. It can also turn into a full blown stroke if not treated correctly.

On Sunday, February 3, 2019, I woke up before 6 A.M. with the same symptoms. This time they were more intense. Then I took my blood sugar before breakfast. It was 515! I don’t recall ever having a reading that high before. I waited for Bethann to leave for church, then I called my good friend, Mike Visser, to take me to the ER. I feared that the numbness was due to diabetic neuropathy. This time, they got me right into the ER, took several tubes of blood, installed an IV line, just in case, took me for a CT scan of my brain and moved me up to a private room on the telemetry floor within an hour. I had to stay almost completely horizontal for the first 24 hours. This is to help heal the brain. The idea is that it is easier for the heart to pump more oxygenated blood to the brain if it doesn’t have to overcome an extra vertical foot or so.

Grand View kept me for three days. We were busy. They took an echo of my carotids. They took another CT with and without contrast of my neck. They took an MRI of my brain. Finally, on Tuesday morning, Dr. Olivero and his team performed an angiogram to look at the blood vessels in my lungs, my neck and parts of my brain. They found my right carotid is 80 to 90 percent blocked. Surgery has been scheduled for March 6. What is interesting about this is that this condition is not related to the TIAs I experienced. The blockage is on the opposite side from where these TIAs occurred. This means this was a serendipitous discovery, much like the last time I went to the hospital for stroke type symptoms and they discovered that my aortic valve had been damaged by the infection on my spine from two and a half years prior. It is also significant that they occurred on the opposite hemisphere of my brain from the overwhelming majority of my prior TIAs and all of my strokes.

Six or eight doctors visited me during those three days. Every one except one used the word “interesting” to describe my case, when they were talking to me. I told Dr. Hurlbut, one of three neurologists I saw, that that is one word that patients do not want to hear from their doctors. I would just like to be normal for once. He sympathized, then assured me I was anything but normal.

My Mac desk chair

Just after we moved into our current, slightly larger, small house in the middle of last month, we purchased a wooden table and three chairs for $50 through an online yard sale. The chairs are simple, sturdy, solid wood kitchen chairs. They were built for durability, not for comfort. We are using one for at the desk in the living room, one for a guest in the sewing room, and one for at my Mac computer which I use for editing photos.

I painted the living room chair Brazilian Tan. I painted my Mac chair Sunny Yellow, Cerulean Blue and Orange. It is part of my Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 home decor project.

2019 Fun-A-Day, days 10 & 11

On the 10th, I painted two more Discus Fish and mounted them on the bathroom wall. I actually finished painting them today, after I realized I had forgotten to paint their side fins. No big thing. It was just a few strokes with a fine brush using three colors of paint. Then I hung my 6″ x 6″ painting from Day 13 of last year’s Fun-A-Day on the wall next to the toilet. It is of a yellow Butterfly Fish. The title of the painting is Hope #13 Biodiversity.

I also arranged more of my paintings in the back entry room, over the freezer and on the outside of the furnace room. I hung most of them using Velcro Command Strips, since this is how I hang them at art and craft shows.

New Year Letter 2019

Dear Friends,
We moved on December 15, so didn’t get any Christmas cards out. We only put a couple of Christmas decorations up. The Christmas over the door swag has lain on various places on the front deck, since we could find no place to hang it. We had to move out of our tiny house on 5th and Spruce, Perkasie, in a hurry. In late October, black mold bloomed all over the house. It was making us sick. The roof leaked and it was damp. The landlord had never told us there was a dehumidifier in the utility room under the house. It had turned off, due to a clogged drain hose. We had never seen the utility room. At any rate, we moved to a slightly larger place seven blocks north, still in Perkasie. It was the only place we looked at. It was the only place in our price range. A bunch of friends and family helped us move, including two strong, very polite young men, whom we had never met before. They even used their pickup truck to help. We are not completely unpacked, but Cranford spent the last few days of 2018 painting the living room, kitchen, hallway and bathroom. We have spent the first few days of 2019 hanging photos, paintings, needlework and icons. We miss having our granddaughters and Lydia and Vincent living across the street. They had already moved to Souderton in October.
Last summer was a joy! On just about every sunny day, the girls walked across the street to ask us to go to the pool with them, and to the new zip line in the park, or to the library. These were all within two blocks south. On most Saturday mornings, we would walk with Lydia, Isabella and Brigitta to the Perkasie Farmers’ Market, two blocks north. Cranford spent most of the summer (June 1 – August 24) painting a 100’ long mural on the retaining wall between our yard and Dave & Tammy Opalkas’ yard. There are photos, etc., at www.perkbirds.com.
Bethann has been learning patchwork quilting from Rosalie. Bethann took early “retirement” from Social Security, so she doesn’t need to work full-time. She took a half-time teller position with QNB bank, that comes with benefits. She continues to sew beautiful clothing for our granddaughters and fun pajamas for our grandsons.
Last January, Cranford painted every day for Perkasie Fun-A-Day, which he started. He is in the throes of it again, this January. Last year he tried to paint a “hope” everyday. Two of those pieces, plus another have since been shipped to a patron on the west coast of Ireland. This January, he is working every day on a single painting of a winter sunrise through the windows of our new digs. You can view his progress on the Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2019 event page on Facebook.
Healthwise, we are doing OK for people of our age and condition. We had no major health crises last year.
We hope that you and yours have a healthy and happy 2019. Thank you for your friendship. Feel free to stop by our new digs. We now actually have room for a few more people at the table.

Peace & love,

Cranford & Bethann Coulter
400 Ridge Ave.
Perkasie, PA 18944-1143

Bethann’s cell: 267-497-0267
Cranford’s cell: 267-497-0268

My Migraine Regimen

I have been asked on several occasions to share my migraine prevention and treatment regimen, so I decided a blog post would be the simplest way to do it. This way I can share it whenever it is needed without having to retype it each time.

The summer of 2011, I had no more than eight days without debilitating migraines. They causes three strokes that summer and multiple trips to the ER and three hospital stays. My summer culminated with being transferred to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in August for a cerebral angiogram. The heart surgeon was about to cut my chest open at Grand View, when another doctor intervened and said, “Let’s check one more thing.” I got an ambulance ride to HUP in Phila. The next day they did the angiogram. It was a grueling procedure. They saw something in my brain that they had never seen before. My adult arteries had never grown to feed my right occipital, parietal and temporal lobes. I have a single fetal artery from my spinal artery with three tiny branches off of it, one to feed each of those lobes.

I met with Dr. Scott Kasner, one of the top stroke specialists on the East Coast. He gave me a regimen to aggressively prevent migraines, since my developmental brain defect is inoperable. This regimen was developed by the Headache Center at Jefferson University Hospital, also in Philadelphia. We have made some changes since the original prescription, eventually eliminating any blood pressure medicine, as well as the Topamax (Topiramate), and adding 5mg/ daily of Atorvastatin. Where we started in 2011:

Lisinopril, 10mg daily
Topiramate, tapered up to 200mg twice a day
Aspirin, 81 mg daily
Ginger, 650mg twice daily
Denatured Butterbur, 175mg twice a day
Vitamin B2, 200mg twice daily
Vitamin C, 500mg twice daily
Magnesium, 300 to 500 mg, three times daily. (I found I absorbed Magnesium Citrate best, so lowered the dosage to 300mg)
CoQ10 100mg three times daily
Vitamin D3, 1000mg three times daily
Fish Oil capsules, 300mg Omega-3, twice daily

We learned that gluten and other inflammatories can increase the incidence of migraine. Also, a low carb diet can lead to a healthier brain, and help prevent migraine. After all, your brain is fat. I had an allergic reaction to Lisinopril, so we eliminated that. After more than five years on Topiramate, I weaned myself off of that, with little increase in incidence of migraines. I take 2 ginger capsules at the onset of a migraine, followed by one every half-hour until the migraine is gone.

I also take homemade green tea capsules, morning and evening. These are not green tea extract. I believe herbs are more often best whole. I also take cinnamon morning and evening. Green tea and cinnamon fight inflammation and help regulate blood sugar. I also take turmeric with black pepper capsules. The black pepper helps activate turmeric , which is a powerful anti-inflammatory. I no longer take to Atorvastatin. I am back on Topiramate, although at a lower dose, after several TIAs this winter. I am now on 325mg aspirin due to my aortic valve replacement in June 2016.

Ericsons, Hostermans, DeLays, etc. (rwbb-3)

I have already mentioned one neighbor. Aunt Helen didn’t have any children; at least none that we children knew of. The families who really formed the neighborhood were the ones like ours: with kids! The mother-lode was across the street, on the shore of Crystal Lake. Immediately across the street were the Ericsons with Carol, Jane, Molly & David. Then the Hostermans with Gretchen and Charlie. Then there were the DeLays with Jimmy and his older sisters. After that, it was Dr. and Grandma Hosterman’s place. He was a hoot! He had been a dentist. He was also on the local school board. He and his wife always had an open door to young people. As Robbinsdale Independent School District #281 expanded and the suburbs were populated with new developments to house all of us Baby Boomers, new schools had to be built. My dad served on the building committee for the new Robbinsdale High School that was finished in 1958, allowing the old high school to become Robbinsdale Junior High. I went to kindergarten at RHS, then returned for 10th through 12th grades. They tucked in a couple of kindergarten classes in buildings all over the district wherever they could for a couple of years. It was an emergency situation, after all. Going to kindergarten in the high school had definite advantages. The high school students were very entertaining. They dressed up in costumes, like the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, or Pilgrims and Indians, and came around the corner of the building three floors below outside of our windows. They did dramatic and art presentations in our classroom. It was great.

Dr. Hosterman was one of two people whom two new junior highs in the district were named after. The other was Carl Sandburg. I was at the dedication of both. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Sandburg at the dedication in 1959. He shook my hand firmly and looked me in the eye. He did not pat my head as so many adults did to four year olds wearing suits and ties in those days. He told me to take my reading seriously. How unusual that a junior high would be named for a living socialist in the 1950s in the heart of a solidly GOP district in the McCarthy era. Hosterman Junior High was dedicated in 1962. Our family attended with the guest of honor and his extended family. I still remember the talent show that the faculty put on as part of the evening’s program. I was seven. In September 1967, I would begin junior high at Sandburg. That year, it was the largest junior high on one floor in the nation with 2200 students on one floor. It had been built for 1800. The next year half of my friends would be transferred to the newly opened Plymouth Junior High further out in the suburbs; one of the pitfalls of being born at the crest of the Baby Boom. Hosterman Junior High succumbed to the wrecking ball in 2010, during the tenure of Gretchen Hosterman as CAO of the school district. Sandburg has been used for administration, adult education, vo-tech, etc. RHS has been rented out to the Shriners; been used as a senior center, as a Spanish immersion school, etc. Several of the elementary schools are now old age and convalescent homes. So they have come full circle. Yes, and the Robbinsdale Branch of the Mpls. Public Library that I used to haunt is now the Robbinsdale Historical Society.

I should get back to the neighborhood now.

We all played together. It was expected that the older ones would hold the hands of the younger ones when we crossed the street. We would let our moms know if we were going to the other end of the block, I guess, but not every time, just that we would be going back and forth. There were no “helicopter parents”. There also was no air conditioning, no stereo or loud radio, no daytime TV. So, moms could hear if something were to go wrong.

When we played cowboys and Indians, David Ericson liked to get killed just outside his back door. He would lay down dead. Then he would scramble into the kitchen to get some ketchup to put on his face, just for added realism. He then had to also grab a few potato chips, because, you know, you don’t waste good ketchup.

On the 4th of July, the whole neighborhood (plus some) spread out blankets on Ericsons’ front lawn to watch the fireworks over the lake. They were beautiful, reflecting on the surface of the water. The front lawn was a pretty steep hill down to the lake. It should be noted that the front doors of houses on lakes or rivers or any body of water is the door facing the water. Ericson’s house had screened porches on both the first and second floors facing the lake. Dick and Jane Schirmacher still live in that house to this day. They bought the house from Jane’s parents after her brother David died in a plane crash on Christmas Eve, 1971, in Peru, while serving a gap year mission assignment with Wickliffe Bible Translators. That so tore up his dad, Les, that he retired from Pillsbury Flour. They spent 3 months with their daughter, Carol, and her husband, Jim Daggett, at Wickliffe’s mission base in Peru. Les engineered and installed refrigeration for the medical compound. They sold the house to Dick and Jane and moved to a small farm in rural Minnesota.

I loved the Ericsons’ house. Many times, when my mom was working for the 1960 census, she let me stay with Lois. My sisters and brother and all the Ericon kids were in school. I remember playing with David’s Lincoln Logs on the floor of their living room while Lois was baking in the kitchen. Their house was one of the few places I felt safe as a child.

Jim DeLay was in the grade between David’s and mine. David graduated RHS in 1971, with my sister Sue Ann. Jim was in the class of 1972 and I was in the class of 1973. Jim was always a friendly and expressive kid. He got into acting in our high school, starring or playing supporting roles in several school plays. We had a fantastic theater program there. By high school, Jim was pretty flamboyant and made no attempt to hide the fact that he was gay. His strict, Catholic father had beat Jim his whole life. On several occasions in our teen years, Dr. Hosterman could hear Jim and his dad fighting in their house next door. He would call my dad, even though we had moved to Golden Valley in 1961, to come over to intervene. At least once, Mr. DeLay’s service revolver was brandished by one of them. My dad could talk Jim’s dad down. Jim was among the first wave of AIDS related deaths in Minnesota, in the 1980s. His dad died in 2016 or 2017. His obituary did not even list his son, Jim.

My sister Sue Ann committed suicide on Nov. 30, 2000, at age 47, leaving behind three children and her husband. After being sober from alcohol for several years, she had succumbed to a gambling addiction. When her boss discovered she had embezzled a large sum of money from him, she took a drug cocktail, leaving her note as the final entry of her diary.

So, in our little neighborhood, after what looked like a fun, balanced, playful childhood, we have had our share of tragedy.