Wages of Fear in Ann ArborMy car wouldn't start yesterday morning, so after I got back from work I had my friend June come and give me a jump. As soon as she turned the corner to go back home, the car died.
Then I had my daughter's boyfriend's dad come out and jump me. He offered to follow me to the auto repair place on State St, but needed to go home and get his glasses first. While he was away, the car died.
When he got back we charged it a long time. I managed to get it as far as the stoplight where Packard meets Eisenhower, where it died.
We charged it again. It made it two blocks to Industrial where it died sticking sideways in the street. After it fired up the first time it promptly died again. The charge that took afterward only got it a block further to Boardwalk, where we couldn't get it going at all. We were blocking the city bus. We were exhausted, so we pushed it into the nearest lot.
Afterwards, I asked my newfound friend if he's ever seen the old French film "Wages of Fear." "It's about a couple of guys trying to drive a nitroglycerine truck through the jungles of Brazil, I said." He hadn't seen it.
The New Thing in Ann Arbor: Demolition of the Old City It's hard to catch the bus downtown, as they have demo'ed the old YMCA building next to the Transit Center. It was an eyesore, a 1960s structure, not quite as ugly as the old Kroger Building in Cincinnati was in its glory days - you saw a different building every day depending on who had their windowshades up and down, and for some reason the rain peeled off it's frontispiece in a diagonal - but it was dirty and it was ugly. Now it's gone.
Riding around downtown I note there are whole city blocks that are coming down; the driveway in front of the hospital, where I used to sit and wait for Allisyn with the security guards trying to shoo me off - gone. August stone buildings in Romanesque style with ivy creeping up their sides, now a memory. At least I am aware something new will go up in these places; when I last passed through Detroit on the Greyhound, it looked like a war zone, so many burnt out houses, so many vacant lots filled with broken bottles, crabgrass and the shattered remnants of concrete driveways.
Construction at the hospital is so prevalent that I couldn't find a way in - I went in one door only to get spun back out the door next to it. I finally found my way to the skywalk thing that connects most of the buildings and made my way to the Taubman Center, where I had a 4:00 appointment.
Mister Anthony, I Have a Problem I have numbness in my left hand, pain in my neck and very bad lower back pain. I've been given all kinds of diagnoses for this condition; late last year I was told I had a fracture in my back, but that was withdrawn and I was told the problem had to be in my neck. I got a call last week from the Spine Clinic, where I was told the doctor was looking at my results and suddenly said, "Oh my..." Nothing more, just come in as soon as you can. So I did.
I finally got to see the MRI film of my neck - if you imagine the disc in your neck as being like a little jelly doughnut, then I have a jelly doughnut in my neck that looks like it has been flattened by a fist. It is periodically blocking the flow of spinal fluid to the rest of my spinal column. While it can be taken out, the surgical procedure for doing so is far too risky for my tastes. Essentially, I get to live with my pain until I become incontinent, certain reflexes become too jumpy, or I manage to injure myself so dramatically that it becomes a neccessity.
So, not quite the death knell I was expecting from the nature of the call, but not good news either. When I got back down to the lobby, I really couldn't find my way out of the building; they have a Big Bird in the front of the children's hospital - always a good landmark before - but now Big Bird is all glassed in and there's no egress. I asked a security guard for help, and he led me out; I would never have found the way out on my own.
Uncle Dave Lewis
Ann Arbor, MI