Family matters...

Before we begin, some introductions are in order.

 

My grandmother with my infant mom; Bingham, Utah, 95 years ago.



I love you and miss you both so much...

 

It's been 30 full years now since the day I should have died.

This is the exact spot on the Santa Monica Freeway west of Los Angeles where my body should have been ejected onto the pavement, run over and ripped apart into dozens of bloody bits at around 7:30PM on Saturday, December 19, 1981.

I totally owe the last three decades of my life to the unknown driver of a psychedelically-painted VW hippie bus. That night, I had intentionally steered my car directly at the side of that van in an attempt to forcibly pass it. It was ONLY the other driver's split-second reaction that prevented us from actually colliding and setting in motion a horrific chain-reaction accident. It would have been certain death for me (and deservedly so), but I probably would have killed whoever was in the van, too, and possibly several others who were following close behind.

I've always wished that, somehow, I could thank that other driver – thank them for the whole life I've been able to live out since then. If they're still around, I doubt they recall the exact date like I do, but what I did that night was so shockingly dangerous and assuredly lethal that I'm certain the van driver must still remember the incident to this day, too. No, they could never forget the dickhead in a green Mustang that cut straight into them and came literally within an inch of killing them on the Santa Monica Freeway that night. Forgive, by now, perhaps, but not forget.

Think on this, friends, the next time you get impatient behind the wheel: simply for the sake of wanting to get to my destination a minute or so sooner than I otherwise would have, I very nearly threw away the entire rest of my life, and taken or ruined the lives of many innocent others. It was the stupidest and most deadly dangerous thing I ever did, and though I didn't deserve it, I was spared, and lived to tell the tale...

 

Shadow, just a few minutes ago...

 

Dig the cool rides!



It's Arroyo Seco Parkway in Los Angeles. Year looks like late 1958. Check out the "Model T"-type car in the fast lane near the end! You could still see those black "flivvers" on the road occasionally until the early-to-mid Sixties...

 

Me, at home, October 30, 2011.

I really want to apologize for the relative paucity of updates lately. Since February, however, I have mostly been posting my family and personal photos on my flickr album. I've pretty much already told all my family stories here on this blog, but the visual history is important, too, and that's what I've spent most of this past year preserving online for posterity.

My most salient recent news is that, in late September, I got to visit the Southland once more, again courtesy of my lifelong friend, Richard Rudolph. On my way down, I got to celebrate my birthday with my maternal cousins in Milpitas. The whole visit was quite magical! I'll have a lot more to share about that happy reunion soon.

 

I got this ephemera on eBay recently. It's a receipt from the hospital I was born in (3 years later), and a statement from the medical clinic at which I was a patient essentially all my young life. (I actually remember the huge cash register-like machine in the clinic office that printed these very bills!)

I was also fascinated to see what doctors and hospitals were charging for their services 60 years ago.




The Magan Clinic bill pretty much tells the story. Mr. Randolph becomes ill the week before Christmas, 1950, and Dr. Magan (the founder of the clinic himself) pays a house call on him on Friday, Dec. 22. He evidently finds something wrong, and tells Mr. Randolph to come to his office the next business day, Tuesday, which amazingly enough is the day after Christmas. (No two-week Holiday vacations for doctors back then!) At the Boxing Day office visit (for which, you'll notice, the doctor did not charge his customary fee), Dr. Magan has his patient get a chest x-ray. Pt. comes back on Friday, and the doctor orders a blood test. Whatever Mr. Randolph has evidently gets much worse over the weekend, though, and he ends up in Covina Hospital. Every day for a week, the doctor visits him in the hospital; on the second day he even pays two visits. By the following Monday, whatever was wrong with Mr. Randolph has improved enough to allow him to leave the hospital, then, a couple weeks after release, Dr. Magan gives him a clean bill of health, for what I suspect was probably a bout of pneumonia.




The hospital bill for 7 days cost Mr. Randolph $94.81 out of pocket. He apparently had Blue Cross, so if we assume the standard 80/20 cost split, that means the full amount of the hospital bill was $475, roughly $70 per day. In 2011 dollars, that's $4,145; about $600 per day. (Dr. Magan's bill would be $1,186 today.)

So, in 2011 dollars, this course of treatment that spanned approximately one month ran up $5,331 worth of charges, with Mr. Randolph having to pay roughly $2,000 of that. Not cheap, but what would just the 7 days in the hospital cost today? I shudder to even think about it.



Speaking of hospital bills, I don't think I mentioned before that the hospital where I had my cataract surgery forgave every penny I owed them, which was $6,000. The surgeon's fee ended up being only $250, too, instead of $2,100. So, with all my office visits, tests, and the surgery itself, the whole lens replacement process only cost me about $1,000. Going in, I estimated it would set me back at least $13,000, so I'm really happy with the financial outcome. Isn't that a blessing? I wrote the hospital to thank them for their charity. I really wasn't expecting that level of generosity at all...

 

The oldest friend of my adult life, Paul Santoro, died one year ago today. Paul had a lot of physical problems the whole 37 years I knew him, and I guess, in the back of my mind, I kind of suspected I would eventually outlive him, but I definitely didn't think Paul's time in this world would be as abbreviated as it turned out to be. (Nor did he, I'm certain.)

Anyway, here is Paul with his belovéd feline companion, Noël. It's a nice picture of them both, and knowing how much Paul loved his cats, I'm sure that if there was one photo he would most like to be remembered by, it would be this one.

 

The only good thing about yesterday's doctor visit was that, while I was waiting, I read an article in a back issue of Vanity Fair about it being 50 years since Judy Garland brought the house down with her performance at Carnegie Hall. This concert appearance, on the night of April 23, 1961, has been called "the greatest night in show business history." I had never heard about this before, despite the fact that Judy Garland has been one of my favorite actresses/entertainers since I was a little boy.

As I was reading the article, I kept thinking, this sounds great, I wish they'd made a recording of it, then it mentioned the concert WAS recorded and released on Capitol Records 50 years ago as a two-record set called Judy at Carnegie Hall. How could I NOT have known about this all my life? Anyway, first thing I did when I got home was snag the album on mp3 and OMG, it's fucking phenomenal. Oh well, better late than never, I guess!

Only thing that could be better would be if the concert had been filmed for posterity, as well. Apparently, few photos even survive from that storied performance. Still, along with the music, they're enough to visualize how it must have been to be there that night. What a great show! One for the ages, for sure...

This song... simply breathtaking, astonishing. And so very sad. Why did she have to die so young...?

 

I found out yesterday that the "wobbly" vision I developed after my cataract surgery is permanent.

The whole iris structure is now loose inside my eye. If you look at my left eye, you can visibly see the iris jiggle back and forth. The doctor said nothing can be done to correct it, it will never get better, and it can only get worse. He wants me to see a cornea/iris specialist at UCLA Medical Center, in case there has been some kind of advance in the treatment/correction of this complication that he does not know about. As far as he is aware, though, there isn't anything that can be done about it.

"...a recent study of more that 200,000 Medicare beneficiaries who underwent cataract surgery between 1994 and 2006 found that 99.5 percent of patients had no severe postoperative complications..."

Wouldn't you know I'd be one of the lucky 0.5%?

 

My mother was born and grew up in Bingham Canyon, Utah. I recently obtained these two bits of ephemera which are from the same time period when Bingham was the center of Mom's world.

This postcard dates from 1924-1949. Someone more familiar with Bingham history could doubtless assign a precise year to this photo, but I'll settle for 1934 – the year Mother graduated from Bingham High School.



Click image to enlarge


And this soda bottle is from the 1920s. Who knows – perhaps Mom drank from this very bottle when she was a kid!

 

As of yesterday, the vision in my left eye was back to 20/20. Yay! That didn't take long. Unfortunately, the "wobble" in the lens implant that I described in my previous post is still as pronounced (and distracting) as ever. So far, that's the only real downside of this otherwise successful procedure. I really hope the wobbling vision goes away soon...