WCTU
A couple of years ago I was riding down Eagle Rock Boulevard Norwalk Avenue
It was built in 1927 to offer a new and
expanded home that could accommodate up to 100 veterans of the Temperance and
Women's Suffrage Movement. Their former digs in Highland Park
Standing outside the car, I began having
second thoughts about walking about. My planter's fasciitis was in full bloom
causing me to hobble awkwardly. I was curious about what went on inside
the building. The front door to the building was closed and every window
in the place was covered. I decided to walk to the back of the place,
snoop around, and put a little more distance between me and the car seat
fiasco.
How is it I had gone more than sixty
years without ever before hearing the term, planter's fasciitis? It is
more debilitating than epilepsy, and by far more likely to afflict one, yet
epilepsy is a household word and planter's fasciitis is like Groucho's secret
word. Did the Greeks and Romans share an natural immunity to it?
Why is there no mention of it in any classic literature? Not even a
"Christ my foot is killing me!" Hercules, Julius Caesar and
Alexander the Great were fortunate to be epileptics. Had they instead
suffered from planter's fasciitis their names would have never been posted to
the big board.
Limping badly, I made it half way up the
driveway and spotted a side door about fifteen feet away. I was having a
terrible time walking and was regretting that I would have to eventually
retrace my steps back to the car. I wasn't anxious to travel another
fifteen feet, but the side door had a small window in which was placed a
written notice. The move to the side of the building had revealed no new
information. There was no sound coming from inside and no movement was
visible in any of the windows. My curiosity forced me to endure the agony
and I made my way over to the door. The notice was a typewritten memo of
some sort, done in font size ten. My reading glasses were in my jacket
back in the car. I couldn't read a word. I tried that trick where
you open your fist just enough to look through the coiled fingers like a
telescope, but the door was shaded by an overhang and there wasn't enough light
to make it work. Just then I realized a woman had appeared in the drive
way and was standing maybe ten feet behind me. I turned and said to her,
"Do you know anything about this place? It seems to be vacant."
The woman hesitated at first, but finally
looked straight at me and said," Doff thur wha larth pro".
I wanted to respond to her but I didn't
know where to start. She started up again, "Sor ghay breven
menkie".
On the second go round she gesticulated
feverishly. All I could think of was Joe Cocker. I began to realize
that I can no longer walk or see worth a damn, and now I've lost either my
hearing or the ability to comprehend language; or, perhaps both. This
couldn't be the early onset of dementia, it doesn't come at you in a sudden
surge, does it? No, it's more likely something along the lines of a
massive stroke and total devastation. Am I really going to have my last
round up in the driveway of the WCTU? I looked skyward and yelled,
"Fire up the still Carrie, I 'm comin' to join ya!"
The woman began to back away, then turned
and disappeared around one corner of the building. I tried to remain calm
and began to feel better. I guessed that today wasn't going to be my last
after all. I slowly returned to the car where the modern day equivalent
of the Manhattan Project was winding down. I put myself once again in the
back seat and figured Michael and Maria weren't anymore interested in sharing
their adventure with me, than I was in sharing mine with them.
With a little thought and effort I think
I've been able to put together a rational explanation for my run in with the
woman at the WCTU. It seems that GLAD, an agency for the deaf, purchased
the building in the early 1990s and has a small staff on site in one of the
single story wings. I figure the woman in the driveway was one of the
GLAD staff, working inside the building. She must have looked out and
seen me and my ramshackle walk, and came outside to help me. She assumed
that I was just another deaf and decrepit person who was trying to find the
GLAD offices. Once she realized I wasn't deaf, just decrepit and possibly
unbalanced, she went back to work.