Air-conditioning

My parents moved to Garland from Dallas in late 1947. In 1940 the population of Garland was only 2,233. Today it is more than 100 times that size – 226,876 in 2010. Air conditioning is what has allowed Texas and the south to become the haven for all those families who have been freezing in the north to migrate to the south over most of the past forty years. Before the widespread use of air conditioning, few people wanted to live all year long in the south.

When I was in grade school about the only buildings that were air conditioned were at the State Fair of Texas. Since my father worked there during each fair (usually late September through the end of October), I spent days there every year as a child. Even that late in the year it could be very hot and we would always head for the Automobile Building where it was always cold. My father, who worked in downtown Dallas at the Federal Reserve Bank, has shown me photos from the 1950s where all the windows were open and every office worker’s desk had a ceiling fan above it. In the 1970s after those offices had been air conditioned, all those fans were removed and sold to people to use in their homes. Our house today, which was built in 1961, was the first place I lived where we had central air-conditioning. At the time it was built, only businesses and stores used ceiling fans. Now we have one in every room of the house!

Big Town Mall, located just off of U.S. 80 E. and Loop 12 in Mesquite, Texas, was constructed in 1959 and was the first enclosed, air-conditioned shopping mall in the Southwest. It was about a ten mile drive from our home, and was a frequent shopping destination for our family. I remember we parked at the entrance to Montgomery Ward where my father would buy us bags of movie-theater-style popcorn to carry as we walked around the mall. About that same time we bought our first air-conditioned car, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala (see the photo above). I remember there were billboards along the highways into downtown Dallas selling after-market air-conditioners that could be retrofitted to cars built without them. No, you probably cannot find a car built with it.

The first school I attended that was fully air-conditioned was my high school – South Garland – which opened in 1964. I had gone through kindergarten, grade school and junior high without the luxury of air conditioning.

Now when we leave our air-conditioned house in our air-conditioned car, we don’t go anywhere that isn’t also air-conditioned. You cannot live in Texas today without that wonderful invention.

 

Lists

Toroweap Overlook at the Grand Canyon

Probably the worst injury I have from my brain injury is memory loss. I can still remember things about my childhood and most of the years after that, but I cannot remember much about the five or ten years before the accident. I cannot remember anything about the work that I did in my five years at Callier Center. I cannot remember names, places, US states, cities, TV or movie actors, countries, and lots of things like that.

Through my rehab I have been learning many ways to help me remember. For instance to remember the state of Illinois, where I lived when I worked at State Farm Insurance, I can remember the city of Chicago, a city I have visited several times in my life, both from work and from family vacations (see photo above – not Chicago, but from a vacation.). And when I think of Chicago I can easily remember its state, Illinois. So when I want to remember that state I just think of Chicago. Another tool I have been using are lists. Fortunately I have been doing that most of my life.

As a child I made lists of what teachers I had for each class each year, especially after I got to junior high and high school, where I had multiple teachers each day. Like most boys – and probably girls, too – I kept lists of the people I dated or wanted to date, including when we went out, where we went and of course a rating system for each girl. At first I did this in a printed calender, but eventually bought a “little black book” to keep records of that. I don’t have that list any longer because just before Jean and I were married, I destroyed my black book.

But I kept making lists. About our vacations and the places I traveled for work, all the cars I have owned, all the places I worked, my salaries, the places I have lived, the cell phones I have owned, my bank and credit card accounts, recipes, musical instruments and stereo equipment I have owned, hurricanes I have lived through – eight, many of the people I worked with, went to school with, and from my college fraternity. And for some of these lists I kept pretty good details. For instance my list of cars also has the make, model, year manufactured, dates purchased and sold, whether they were new or used, purchased or leased, paint colors, engine size, cylinders, horse power, even the EPA estimated rating when available, where I bought it and how I disposed of it – sold, traded in, or handed down to my son Evan or my brother-in-law Bill.

Early on I used paper and pencil to make these lists, but in the 1970’s when I started working with computers, I used those to keep my lists. In the 80’s I started using personal computers and in 2003 I got my first smartphone, which I have been using ever since.

All of that was long before my brain injury, so it was easy for me to continue doing that. While I was at the Centre for Neuro Skills (CNS), even though it took me six months before I could remember enough to use my phone, I kept lists of my therapists, neuro rehab specialists, roommates, even the meds I was taking. I also made lists of thing I needed to remember like US states, countries around the world that were in the news, all my bills, my medical accounts – Blue Cross, COBRA, Medicare, Social Security, Fidelity (the holder of my five retirement funds – Oncor, John Hancock, Sabre, Nielsen, Hewlett-Packard), unemployment, and of course the ACA Marketplace (obamacare)!

So as you can see I was prepared for brain damage long before it ever happened. There area still may things I have trouble remembering, but now I have plenty of resources I created throughout my life to aid in my recovery.

It’s a wonderful wife

My beautiful wife!

When I was a sophomore in college at East Texas State University in late 1969, the university changed the way the semesters were scheduled by moving fall semester finals to before Christmas rather than right after. That gave us nearly a month between the end of fall and the beginning of the spring semester. Not wanting to be idle for that time, I wanted to get a job to make a little money. My sister Sande, a sophomore at South Garland High School, and I headed out to Northpark Center which had opened just four years earlier. She immediately found a job as a waitress at Kip’s Big Boy Restaurant, but I did not want to work waiting tables so I applied at all every other non-food shop in the mall – over 150 at that time – and got nothing, even though it was just three weeks before Christmas. Not finding what I wanted, I went back to Kip’s where they hired me to buss tables.

On my first afternoon I managed to drop and shatter a full tray of dishes, relegating me to the kitchen where I spent the next month washing dishes. On the up side, I met one of the best-looking girls I had ever met – Jean Caskey. I asked her out to a concert by Dionne Warwick, but since that was not until February I also took her to see Midnight Cowboy, which had opened that past summer. After we saw the movie I asked if she was REALLY hungry, and when she said yes, I took her to Phil’s Delicatessen, where their burgers were huge.

Since I came home from Commerce every weekend to help my mother with her interior decorating business, I was able to take Jean out those weekends. We dated for two-and-a-half years, getting married August 4, 1972, less than three months after I graduated from ETSU. We moved to Carrollton where I had gotten my first job and eventually bought our first house there five years later. We also were able to do a good bit of travelling. When I worked at Lone Star Gas in downtown Dallas I was able to attend job-related events all over the United States, often taking her with me – Washington, DC; Boca Raton, FL; New Orleans; New York City; Anaheim, CA; Las Vegas; and Colorado Springs. We also made trips on our own to Corpus Christi and Rockport (on our honeymoon), to visit her sister Sue in Charleston, SC; skiing in Colorado; and many other places all over Texas, the US and even Guadalajara, St Thomas, the Bahamas, Canada and Britain.

We both loved to eat, so we have done that both at home and everywhere we traveled. We’ve had Chicago-style pizza in Chicago, muffulettas and beignets in New Orleans, Katz’s Delicatession and Carnegie Deli in New York City, and many great dining experiences everywhere we went.

Jean has been with me through thick and thin. About a year before we were married, I decided to buy a motorcycle and pick her up for lunch at Zuider Zee restaurant, where she worked. On the way there I wrecked the bike, breaking my jaw. Of course she wonedred why I never showed up for lunch – I was in the hospital! Then in Tulsa the summer of 2003 I spent a month in the hospital, along with nearly a year in rehab, from Guillain-Barre syndrome. And, of course, most recently on November 1, 2012, I ended up at Parkland Hospital after being hit by a car, suffering a traumatic brain injury.

Jean has been there to help and support me ;every step along the way. With the TBI keeping me from being able to take care of the bills, for the first time in her life Jean had to take over those chores. I hadn’t meant to keep her in the dark about our finances, she just did not have any interest. Two years ago she and Evan had to dig through my stuff – mostly online because I received and paid bills online whenever possible – to figure out who we owed and how to pay for everything. Jean worked miracles getting me organized and taking care, not only with the bills we already had, but also the new ones resulting from my injury, from medical bills to long term disability and Social Security Disability Income.

I always knew how wonderful she was, but after the past two years, I am truly amazed at what she is capable of doing, for me and with me.

Jeannie, I admire and love you, beyond belief!

Waiting to adopt

In my lifetime I have been fortunate enough to have visited 38 states in the US and have lived in seven. I have also been to Canada, Mexico (three times), the US Virgin Islands, The Bahamas and Great Britain – England, Wales and Scotland.

In 1983 Jean and I, having been married for eleven years, were ready to begin the process of adopting a child. Jean knew that the best place for us to do that was at Hope Cottage. Adoption was starting to be a more difficult process because the stigma of having a child out of wedlock was more acceptable in this country so more unwed girls were deciding to keep those children. The number of children available at Hope Cottage was shrinking so fast that, whenever they would announce when they were accepting applications on a first-come, first-served basis, people wanting to adopt would line up outside their door several days before hand, hoping to get a chance to adopt. By 1983 they ended that process and began just taking applications during certain times of the year and then do a random selection from those for the twenty or so couples they would select for the coming year.

We submitted our request and began waiting to see if we would, as I put it, “win the adoption lottery.” We learned that the selection would be made sometime in June of 1984, which was the same time that we had been planning our vacation to the British Isles. I had been planning that trip for over a year. Each payday I would walk over to the bank and purchase a hundred dollars or so of American Express travelers checks in British pounds in preparation for that trip. There was also a book store near my office where I would buy travel books that I used to plan where we would and what we wanted do see and do – my parents had been on guided tours all over the world, but I wanted to do it myself. That’s why we were going to the UK, where they spoke English!

So in late May we flew to JFK in New York City and on to Heathrow near London. From there we rented a car, loaded our luggage and set out to learn how to drive on the left side of the road. Our first stop was in Guildford at a small shopping area. The first thing I learned was that I should have brought some cash in pounds, because I had to pay to park the car. I left Jean in the car while I walked into a store to find where I could cash one of my travelers checks. I was not successful and finally went back to the car and we left. Our next stop was in Winchester to see the cathedral, where I did manage to get some pounds to pay for parking.

Over the next four weeks we saw Stonehenge, Dartmoor National Park, Tintagel Castle, Oxford, Blenheim and Kensington Palaces, Portmeirion village, Sherwood Forest, York, Fountains Abbey, Beatrix Potter’s home in Near Sawrey, Cumbria, Loch Ness (we saw no monsters), Inverness, the Isle of Skye and Edinburgh. After a week in Scotland we turned in our car and took a train back to London, where we spent our final week using the “Tube,” London’s underground transit system, to take in the whole of the city. All along the way we stayed at bed-and-breakfast lodging in private homes, guest houses, small hotels, farm houses and even a castle from the 15th century.

When we finally returned home, we found waiting for us the letter from Hope Cottage accepting us into their adoption program which resulted in us receiving Evan two and a half years later. He was thirteen days old when we went to Hope Cottage to get him. He is now 27 and will turn 28 in little over a month.