These events are true, yet the names of the facilities and people have been changed to avoid endless meetings in court appearances. I must thank Washington Irving, a dear friend of mine, for providing the way to becoming a great writer. Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and its story is still in my thoughts this while I ready myself for October the 31st and the birth of my first grand child Olivia. Oh yes, she'll turn six on this day... my treat.
The discovery of rich veins of oil were discovered in Huntington Beach at the turn of the century. Settlers poured into the city that crisscrossed two rivers: the Santa Ana an Bolsa Chica. Bolsa Chica, or little bag, became a larger when Henry Huntington decided to build railroad track to link up the tracks to Long Beach. Black Gold or oil had been discovered when made a boom town out the city.
The little bag became a suitcase and even had its named changed to Huntington. Thanks to a railroad tycoon Henry Huntington, soon tracks linked the city of Black Oil with Long Beach. Red cars made the city available to many tourists and workers.
My brother Mel began driving here in the late seventies. He would take his Saturn down south each weekend, and I never knew why he came here until I had visited him in a Assistant Living facility over nine years ago.
It could have been Main Street with its many bars and eateries. He worked at the Red Onion for a spell but he probably became intoxicated by the beach women and great surf. Of course forty years ago he could throw a football over sixty yards and had a golden voice that could excite the ladies.
He wished my Dad Harry to buy him a condo for a bit over one hundred thousand but he didn't. The money bequeathed to him, a large sum, went mainly to restaurants up and down Beach Blvd, the main artery in Huntington Beach. He became unaware that the hopping to one restaurant after another soon made him obese. His weight mushroomed to over three hundred and fifty pounds. His roll of cash lasted until about nine years ago. I had called him up at the Sahara Motel in Stanton, a little city located between Anaheim and Buena Park -- that was about nine years ago.
Due to diabetes and a bungled eye operation, he began his stay inside the Lucky Star Assistant Living Apartment about the same time. You probably never ever have heard of Midway City, but it is nothing to sneeze at or you will miss it like I did the first time. Mel had one dead eye, and one close to death. It's vein leaked so he began shots inside the good eye about seven years ago, to prevent the from going dead.
My stay inside Surf City began over one year ago. I could be closer to one daughter and also help Barney get around driving his car. I first became acquainted with the city built over water last February. I had already saved my brother three times from certain death, as the Lucky Star offered poor nutrition, a quick fix doctor, and as one patron said, a host of diseases.but will not bore you with the specifics. Before this immediate one, another be
My phone rang in the early hours of a February morning. I could barely make out the broken English but after several repetitions city about eight months ago when I visited my brother Barney in the hospital with the same name- but found no fountain anywhere.
An earlier phone call from the Lucky Star Assistant Living told me that he had been ambulanced to the Fountain Valley Hospital. I passed Low's Hardware, American Tire on Warner Avenue before I descended on the Euclid hospital. I asked a few people its location.
The Fountain Valley appeared to be a chain of motels, somehow hooked together. Barney, so I was told had suffered a siege of Pneumonia. . He had been staying at the Lucky Star Assistant Living Center inside Midway City for about eight years. On four occasions I had the fortune find him there close to death and made sure he received prompt attention. But a flashback to his first operation will get this new legend started.
As usual, Huntington Beach incurred another heat wave, and me without a workable AC inside my car. I carried a large bottle of water as I entered the hospital and did the usual. A worker led me to his room. Inside the doorway was a mammoth turd inside a portable potty. The noxious aroma swept me back off of my feet. Of course nobody works on Sunday so the bowel movement probably had to wait for another day. Immovable Mel had a tube running up his nose and an IV inside his arm. I visited the Vietnamese speaking nursing center
"Mel needs water and maybe a different medication!"
I just knew that a steady diet of chicken in all flavors and forms had been the culprit. He hated the food at the this so-called assistant living center. Somehow I made it to the hospital and found a friendly bush to avail myself of my own bladder problems. Inside the hospital the receptionist could not find the name of Barney's name in the register . Of course, like most Latin's, understanding English was a impossible. I wrote down his name and she sent me to his room.
I had visions of my brother flying in the air holding onto a massive Norm's T-boned steak. Inside the room Mel was asleep with his purplish looking ankles peering out of the bed. His bad eye opened enough to see me.
'"Is that you Barney? I am hungry, get me something to eat." Down the street I removed a few dollars and bought him a burger and fries. Mel stood up in bed and smiled he cheated death again from the Lucky Star Assistant Living center.
About a month later, I found him at what looked like a motel in Santa Ana. off of Beach Blvd. I had bought him a blueberry pie from Knott's Berry Farm and another burger. On a tread mill he was walking and smiled when he saw me and the food I had brought. He had a visitor. Sir Henry Goodfellow, the owner of the Lucky Star facility.
Sir Henry walked as if had suffered with hemorrhoids all of his life. His sucked-in cheeks never knew what is was to smile. He appeared to be sleep walking. Each bed meant over one thousand dollars for this transplant from the Ukraine. His Dad had built an apartment and turned it into an assistant living center for his only child. He made sure to fill each bed so he could buy a brand new jag each year. He lived in San Clemente, no doubt in a home overlooking the best surf boarding waves in the country.
"I have saved a bed for Mel. He will be leaving here shortly."
Two weeks later, I visited him again. He looked chipper and wished me to drive him to Norms, down the street for the usual, chicken gumbo, salad, and a T-bone with a potato and hash browns. His pants, as usual, slid down his large un-shy torso while we sauntered into Norms on Beach Blvd.
The waitress did not need to ask Mel his order. The Lucky Star never had steak or salad, two items that had kept him alive all of these years. But it was that chicken gumbo soup that came alive. In fact, Barney could almost dance with his favorite soup. But it was the T-bone steak that he wished to devour, bone and all.
I needed to cut the steak for him. Legally blind in both eyes, he could still see the second line of the Snellen eye chart. Barney ate each bite like it would be his last. Every fiber of that steak was not safe from Barney's palate, when he still owned enough canines to cut each piece to threads.
Mel, or so I thought, turned into a German Shepard while he attacked the bone. Yes even the bone was not safe from Mel's prodigious appetite -- or so I thought. But the Lucky Star never served steak or even salad, keeping Barney on a low nutrition diet.
About four weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I paid my five dollars to eat again with my brother Barney . The dining room area hosted about twenty tables that seated forty residents. Most used wheel chairs or walkers to enter this feeding area.
"Is that you, George?"
He seemed listless and could not see or cut his food. Hell I knew the problem, even if one of his table mates thought he did not care for the food. I cut his thin-sliced brisket, cut it up, and attempted to feed him.
"c...c..c..c..c" like the car's starter that could not negotiate a turn, Barney began to cough up the food I had shoveled inside his gullet. His head leaned to one side and his only seeing eye closed. He didn't move."
Puss rolled down his closed left eye. He felt clammy. I knew that he hadn't been eating due to the lack of sight, and possibly his crazy roommate had provided a new disease for Mel, like the double Pneumonia he had contacted last February and almost died. The Latina manager entered the dining room.
In hysterical English, she muttered, "What Mel not eating...Let me try to make him eat!"
"Mam, can you phone for am ambulance....Please get an ambulance!"
Finally she called for an ambulance. Members of the Orange County Fire Department checked his blood pressure and did not move him. The ambulance, as always, followed few minutes later. They picked him up and asked about me. (The Fire Department bills the user over $1,500 for each pick up.)
"I'm his brother. Can I ride along with you?"
"Not our policy, but ...sure come along."
"Hope the Huntington Hospital is your destination."
"Yep, you're in luck."
By seven that night, he finally was moved to a room and I said my good-by to Mel. The hospital was only a mile to my senior Apartment but I waited to catch the 29 bus off of Beach Blvd. A Dr. Gray called me the next day, and she spoke with patience and concern.
"Melvyn has diabetes, a bladder infection, an eye one too, and also an infected ear."
"Do me a favor Dr. Gray. If he goes to another rehab place, please send him closer to me than Anaheim. Two days later, I again went with an ambulance and she must have listened to my plea, as he was moved to the Happy Trails Nursing Home, a block from me.
That first day was on a Saturday during another Huntington Beach heat wave. The Happy Trails Nursing home did not feel happy that morn since they did not have electricity. Each room carried two beds. The linen was off the patient and all prayed for the electric to be back shortly Yet from ten until that evening, it felt hot and clammy inside.
Well the heat wave continued, but with a restored AC system, it was OK to breath again. Mel still could not get out of bed -- and to put it bluntly he was dead weight. I fed him the mud cakes brought in from the kitchen galley down the hall.
You probably guessed it by now. Whatever the mush happened to be, each guest in the Happy Trails Nursing home received the same food -- mush. Of course my brother was mad. Why he, like me had been weaned on meat and enormous salads by our Mom Edith.
I told Jacob at the sign-in station and he forwarded the message to the kitchen. Mel now was more content. But he still had those mammoth headaches, and blindness. The social worker made an appointment for me to go to an eye specialist in Fountain Valley. The place was packed with the old, retched and blind, many taking advantage of free medical Obama care.
During week two, a shuttle picked us up and we visited a Dr. Do in a medical facility. The shuttle driver had trouble finding a parking place so he parked and I wheeled Mel into a small office room on the third floor.
We did not have long to wait, even though the receptionist did not get the forms from the Happy Trails. A Mexican family was ahead of us. Finally I pushed Mel inside Dr. Do's room. With his only living eye, he recognized him as the one who treated him inside the Huntington Hospital.
The Vietnamese doctor did not look a day over ninety five. Thin and severely bent over, his gait was slow as he re-examined Mel's left ear. He told me to have a see-see also
"See that lump, it is cancer. We need to remove it and make a skin graft." He removed a bit of puss from the ear and afterwards, had a form written out for the Happy Trails Nursing Home. "We need to set up an operation with Dr. Gray now." He seemed alarmed and nervous as he spoke about the lump in the ear drum.
Of course I thought about my operation way back in 2010 of August. I knew then how important it was to remove the tumor quickly- ever so quickly- or it might spread to other organs. In my case, he got it all. Even a few months back, I had another growth removed, whole in Irvine. I knew the severity of removing the core.
Mel began to look more alive. I bought hamburger patties from Trader Joe's along with the usual of onion and tomato. Mel smiled with each bite. Even the galley down the hall provided him with salads and meat cakes. But a change, a big change came over my brother Mel. The headaches became like a kettle drum beating everywhere. Could it be the ear lobe cancer had spread -- too late for an operation. (Cont.on next post.)
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