Day: October 16, 2015

I write this now, with a feeling of total remorse, knowing there was no way for me to stop what was happening and continuing to happen, because I would have been stopping heroes who went by, to their chosen destiny!

I’m writing this to record an event that I experienced years ago. At that time I wanted to forget what happened, and just get on with life, but now I think it’s time to tell about that memory. Claire, not yet my wife, and I had traveled with my 1990 Peterbilt that I converted into a Motorhome to Long Island from Florida to visit her family. Being I had not yet visited with my sons in New Jersey, I decided to drive my car, which had been towed behind our Motorhome, to Smooth-on, my older son Trey’s Company, where my Son Michael also worked. Leaving Claire with her grandchildren, I left alone at a time of the day that forced me to take a different route than I normally took. Normally, I would take the George Washington Bridge and travel across New Jersey on I80, then south I287, then onto I78 and on to Smooth-on, but seeing the traffic, I detoured to the Long Island Expressway onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, although traffic on it too, was moving slowly, but at least it was moving. If you know anything about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, you’d know it runs alongside of the East or Harlem River with a spectacular view of the West side of Downtown Manhattan. Creeping along, but enjoying the view that I knew and loved, I noticed smoke billowing from the tip of Manhattan, over the buildings facing me, but coming from further inside. I thought to myself, wow, some building must be burning with a terrific force to create such smoke. After a while the traffic began to stop and go, then eventually stop. My view was just of the smoke because of the many buildings in the way to allow me to see any further and the one that was actually burning. Eventually, we came to a complete stop and sirens were blaring away from all directions. The smoke became thicker and thicker as I watch. Many of us got out of our cars to see what the holdup was. Soon thereafter we watch cars with blue light on their roves, drive on the shoulder of our highway heading south. Across the river too were cars with blaring and flashing lights speeding south to the fire. More and more cars kept coming along the shoulder on our right, some with revolving red lights and sirens blaring and you could see the drivers frantically try to get somewhere, they were firemen. We sat for hours until the highway going north was empty. Then slowly all the cars going south were being rerouted over the center island and told not to stop and go just north. Naturally each driver said “Hey We want to Go South”, the policemen ignored everyone and made it clear that we had no choice “GO, go now!!. looking now for the last time at south Manhattan Island, the smoke really was expanding to cover the whole of tip of Manhattan. I didn’t get back to Long Island till dark, as everything was stopped dead. Not knowing what really was happening, as the radio had confusing stories of a major disaster in the downtown area. Had the highway traffic on my side not stopped until I was further south, I would have experienced firsthand what happened. So, all I can remember of the day are all those firemen who took to the shoulders to get to that fire, and what then eventually happened to them. This memory has been stuck in my mind and the main reason for trying to forget. God!! What happened to all those men who were driving to save others? They were driving to their own death, and the date was                                             9/11/2001.

This is a short story about an accident I had in my 40’s, and I’m writing to inform my surgeon who was going to operate in two weeks on my lower intestine, to remove 3″ from it, that has a phase #1 cancer growing on it, and it was to be done at Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan.

Dear Dr. Julio Garcia:

I’m writing this to inform you  of something that happened to me  that I had completely forgotten about for over 40 years. While in a meeting this past week with my general practitioner, Dr Magliullo , we discussed the up and coming procedure that you and your team of Memorial Sloan Kettering  doctors were going to perform on my cancer. In the discussion we talked about some of the happenings I’ve had over the years, and I recalled an event that happened to me in 1973/4. We were at my  wife’s parents home celebrating our annual Thanksgiving Day meal, and my one year old son, Christian, was just learning to walk. As he did so, he was ringing and playing with a 6″ handheld Indian brass bell that was a sample of what I was importing at the time for the F.W. Woolworth Co.  

This bell is very similar to the one little Chris was holding, except the top of the handle came to a point.

After he was tired of playing with it, he left it upright on a chair that was not visible to any of us, as it was a corner chair under the dining room table that was also in a corner of the crowded room. Being so small Chris was able to walk under the table without hitting the top. Later, when the meal was to begin, I, being very agile, decided to sit at the table in that corner, allowing the rest of the family to easily be seated. So, without seeing the bell, I slipped around the side chairs, and raised my right foot over the back of the chair I was going to sit on and sat down with my butt landing directly on that bell. Needless to say, it went straight up into my body between my butt,my penis and my rectum. Shocked! I Jumped up flipping over the “already set” Thanksgiving table, and as I did so, I pulled out the bell which had gone completely inside me, and all the way up to the bell portion. Out came the bell and a lot of blood as well, panicking, I ran outside of the house bleeding through my pants and falling onto the grass, passed out. I was rushed to a local hospital, but by the time I got there my testicles had begun filling up with the blood that could no longer escape out the hole created by the bell, as it swelled, it closed. My testicle sack began filling to the bursting stage and eventually was the size of a football. The doctors at the hospital, could not decide how to proceed,  and they finally agreed it was best to let nature take it’s course. While I was still in the Emergency room, a bed was wheeled up beside mine, and as I turned to see who and what was happening, I saw my son Trey laying there, passed out cold. The person who wheeled him in said “He keeled over just outside in a faint, in the middle of the street,” 

Afterwards, they moved me into a private room in the maternity ward and I was immediately put into a “Sits bath” to relieve the pain, and also allow my new football to float freely. I was there for two weeks as the swelling slowly subsided. At the end of that time, I was released with no further damage to my body. I was 40 years old and strong, and later just forgot about it. However, Dr Magliullo after laughing at my experience, brought up the point that there may be scar tissue in that area of the accident that might effect my operation.
I tell you this with a laugh, but at the time it happened it was not so funny as they make it out to be in the movies, with the people watching become hilarious. Also just to make you aware of  another incident before you operate on me. I have had no repercussion from that accident nor the one earlier when  I was 18.  I was working the night shift in a manufacturing plant that made giant co-axle cables used under the Ocean . My job was to apply a tremendous amount of electricity to try to destroy them and find out their limits on how much electricity that it could withstand. I did this each night and testing different sizes and shapes of cable that became boring, especially when the cable I was testing that night blew very early, leaving me with nothing to do the rest of the evening. One night when a cable blew early, I decided to roam around the plant to see just what was there. I came to an outside wall with very large windows, but they were high and hard to look out of. I notices a place that was higher off the ground and figured it was a good way to look out. Jumping onto it, the cover I landed on gave way as my right foot hit it, but not the rest of my body. What happened next was my crotch hit an edge of what I later found out was a ventilator shaft. When I hit it’s edge, it cut my left testicle in half but not the sack around it, causing the same football affect winding me into the local hospital. Here again no physical affects had changed any of my abilities, especially having children…I’ve had 3 sons. Both incidents happened and disappeared. this is just for your knowledge, and maybe a little laugh.

Sal
The White Knight, Keeper of Dragons