Quality Time with Dad

Well, six hours or so at the hospital with the ol' coot on Tuesday and another six hours yesterday. He was sprung from the joint late yesterday afternoon. Took him home and when I last saw him he was drinking coffee, eating a big slab of carrot cake and inquiring about the dinner menu.

After much delay the urologist finally took him down to the operating room on Wednesday afternoon for a video tour of his urinary tract. Since he had his bladder removed about 16 years ago it was a short tour - and the doc said everything looked just fine. So...we really do not know what caused all the bleeding. Maybe an infection....or maybe not. Who can say?

The bottom line is everything is back to what passes for normal at the elders and I am back on track for a vacation beginning Monday. Lots of stuff to do between now and then...

But first an historical item from Dad's memory bank. We spent a lot of time together the past few days and every once in awhile I hear a story that I had not heard before. I don't recall what triggered this particular story - but I chuckled for the rest of the day...

It seems that Dad's graduation from Juneau High School in 1932 was a pretty closely run thing. His credit cushion evaporated when he failed a bookkeeping course. The reason for the failure, however, was NOT his lack of interest or enthusiasm for the subject as I would have predicted; but a serious personal conflict with the teacher whose name shall remain anonymous.

At the time Grandma Newman was running a boardinghouse on Second Street - right across from the Baranof Hotel. There were a dozen or so boarders - single miners - many quite colorful characters I'm sure. One gentleman, who we shall call "Al," apparently had a habit of sneaking a female friend into his room late at night. This practice offended Grandma Newman's Victorian/Lutheran morals and/or the posted rules of the establishment and late one night she confronted Al's visitor, read her the riot act, and tossed her out of the boarding house.

The next morning she took dad aside and apprised him of the situation fearing, no doubt, that it was possible he would receive some feedback as a result of the midnight heave-ho since the visitor happened to be his bookkeeping teacher.

Grandma's instincts were correct. Dad said that he immediately became the teacher's whipping-boy and suffered cruelly in class. Finally one day he had enough - told the teacher to go to hell and marched out of the classroom. He spent a week or so sitting in study hall during this class period until the gym teacher finally sought him out and convinced him to go back and sit in the bookkeeping class. And that's what he did - sit in the class without speaking to the teacher or doing any of the class work. Not surprisingly he failed the class...but graduated with EXACTLY the minimum number of credits required.

Dad shared a couple of other interesting tales; but I shall save them for another day.

Time to head to the elders...and I need a haircut today...