Gloomy days and Aladdin Lamps

I heard that one of my coffee-drinking buddies wasn't doing very well, so I decided to visit him.

"Skyd" Jorgensen (not his real name) is now 80 and is down to 130 pounds. In his prime, he could run a jack-hammer all day long and then work his second job for another eight hours...day-after-day-after-day.

One of his favorite stories is how he walked into a liquor store one Friday and the young men behind the counter had a barbell they were "curling".

"Iffen I can do that 25 times, will you give me a fifth of vodka?" Skyd challenged. 

The older of the two men looked at the weights and then at Skyd. "If you can do it one-handed...then I will give you a bottle of vodka. If you can't, then you pay double."

Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...left handed."

Skyd cranked out the 25 curls with the 90 pounds using his left arm.

Then the man challenged Skyd. "I will give you two bottles if you can to another 25...but you give back that one if you cannot."

Again, Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...with your left hand"

Skyd knocked out another 25 curls using the same arm he had done the first 25 with and left with two, free fifths of vodka. Vodka has very little taste, but the vodka in those two bottles tasted like victory.

Anyway, Skyd is in decline. He was short of breath just sitting and talking.

He insisted that I take one of his precious Aladdin Lamps. He and his now-deceased wife collected them. That is not a great sign in terms of how much longer he expects to live. I didn't ask for it. He told me to bring it over to the table from where it was displayed.

We had talked about Aladdin lamps in the past. It was one of the wonders that my dad remembered from his childhood. He grew up poor during the Great Depression. His dad had TB and died in 1936 "poor". Shack by the river round the bend from the hobo-camp poor. 

We talked about his will and how he wants his estate to be divided up. He only has one heir, and that heir has been stealing from Skyd. Perhaps he thinks that since he is going to inherit it all anyway, he will just speed up the transfer.

In other news, Skyd told me that he had a plumber quote the cost of replacing his water-heater. The quote was for $3000.

I realize that there are extenuating conditions: Poor access, old pipes and such. But I have to wonder if maybe the plumber looked at Skyd and thought "This guy is tottering on the brink of dementia. He is a pigeon waiting to be plucked."

Unfortunately, there are people in EVERY profession (and most families) who see people who are in their last five years of life as nothing more than resources to be strip-mined. 

So it has been a gloomy day.

The weather is changing and the sky is gray. Plants are being squirreled away in piles of mulch and compost to over-winter. I ran out of time getting them into the ground.

Cherish the people who treat you well.