Out of My Mind (33 page)

Outside the lobby door, there were several glass-topped tables and wrought iron chairs. Half a dozen people who had not yet gone to bed were still drinking and greeted the refugees from inside as if they were hosts.

The fire engines arrived and the firemen, in boots and helmets, axes at the ready, stormed inside ready to extinguish the inferno.

We sat down and watched as other guests poured out. Many of the women who'd arrived at the reunion determined to look their best, no longer did, although I was much impressed by the high-fashion silk, flowered dressing gown worn by the wife of one classmate. I couldn't help noticing that she looked better in her bedclothes than she had at dinner. Had there been no fire alarm, none of us would ever have seen the grandness of her nocturnal habiliment. Such a waste, I thought . . .
and thank goodness for the false alarm that added so much to our reunion weekend.

Courses on how to write seldom produce any good writing because the students are so young they have no background or experience on which to base anything.

When I read about the potential for nuclear war between India and Pakistan, I dismissed it as a subject to write about because I know so little about the issues. Then my eyes fell on the word “Kashmir.” I thought to myself, “Although I am uncertain about the difference between Cashmere and Kashmir, I can write about Kashmir. I've been to Kashmir.”

When World War II ended in Europe in 1945, my editor sent me to China and India. It was assumed, after the Germans surrendered, that several million American soldiers in Europe would be shipped to India and China to invade Japan. My assignment was to write stories about what it would be like for American soldiers when they got to China and India.

On the flight from France to New Delhi, the C-54 cargo plane stopped for fuel in Cairo. The pilot misjudged our distance from a telephone pole on the side of the runway and clipped off a few feet of our left wing. I was pleased with the accident because it made necessary a three-day stopover for repairs and provided me with a tourist-eye view of Cairo. I stayed at the Shepheard's Hotel, with which I was familiar as the locale of some movie I saw as a child.

When I arrived in New Delhi, it was 110 degrees. I was still wearing my wool uniform and all I wanted to do was lie down on the relatively cool, mosaic floor of the airport and die. I had no interest in India or
my assignment. After I pulled myself together I jotted down some story ideas.

American soldiers on leave in India often wangled their way on board one of the cargo flights to Kashmir, so I decided to write a story about where American soldiers in India went on leave. I was surprised but delighted to find The Vale (Valley) of Kashmir one of the garden spots of the universe. It is in a verdant bowl eighty miles long and twenty-five miles wide surrounded by majestic, snow-capped mountains. There is not a more spectacularly beautiful place on earth. The snow on the mountains releases some of its water as it melts under the hot sun during the day, and a thousand streams of water make their way down the rocky crevices to the town. Many of the streets are waterways, much like Venice, and people use small boats to get around.

I found a barge-like boat with rooms for rent to visitors. The only other occupants were three British sergeants from New Delhi. We quickly became friends and on the second day I joined them on a horseback expedition into the mountains.

I had never ridden a horse. Mine was a broad-backed, sure-footed animal thoroughly familiar with making his way up the icy slopes. We followed one of the streams, often crunching along on the frozen layer of ice covering the running water beneath it. The day was pleasantly warm and we took off our shirts. I soon realized it was going to be a long day. Eight hours later, we returned our horses to their owner and went to our boat. I could barely walk, crotch-bound from eight hours in the saddle and so sunburned that I could neither walk nor lie down comfortably.

Several years after I left, Kashmir was divided between India and Pakistan and they've been fighting over the region ever since.

This is all I know. It isn't much, but at least I've actually been to Kashmir and, to that extent at least, if you haven't been there, I know more about it than you do.

We had a guest at our summer home for the month of July. Spencer summers with us every year. Spencer is our daughter Emily's great white English bulldog. Dogs are nicer than people. Why are so many dogs so good when so many people are so bad?

It's strange that there are so many distinctively different breeds of dogs too, each with its own personality. The ethnic differences between people of the various races do not begin to be as great as the differences, physically and mentally, between a bulldog and a chihuahua, or between a St. Bernard and a Shih Tzu.

The American Kennel Club lists 150 different breeds among its membership. The ten most popular breeds are listed in order in 2004 as: the Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, German Shepherd, Beagle, Yorkshire Terrier, Dachshund, Boxer, Poodle, Shih Tzu, and No. 10, the Chihuahua.

Labradors and Golden Retrievers certainly belong at the top of the list. Friendly and smart are the two most important attributes for a dog and you can't stop a Lab or a Golden Retriever from being friendly.

The surprises to me on that list are the Dachshund at No. 6, the Shih Tzu at No. 9, and the Chihuahua No. 10. I've never known any of those breeds but I suspect that one reason for their popularity is the convenience of their size. Chihuahuas don't appeal to me at all and Shih Tzus are cute, but I like more in a dog than cute. I am offended that the English bulldog, the best of all possible dogs, doesn't appear on the list until No. 14.

Spencer is old now for a bulldog. He's twelve. Emily never took him to an obedience school and, if she had, Spencer would have failed and probably been kicked out. He's not deliberately disobedient. He just doesn't care what you want him to do if he feels like doing something else. He'll listen attentively when you tell him to do something and then do what he pleases.

When I was growing up, my mother did a favor for a woman who raised Pekingese. As a token of her thanks, the woman gave my mother the prize of a litter of Pekingese puppies. My mother was pleased with the gift but aghast at the breed. She couldn't conceal her dislike for this two-pound Pekingese. The woman, who attended a lot of dog shows, asked Mother what she'd like instead. Mother chose an English bulldog. He came already named “Spike” at three months old, and Spike and I grew up together. In my mind, Spike is related to every bulldog I've ever seen. There are traces of him in Spencer.

When our children were young, we bought a bulldog pup and named him “Gifford” after the football player. He became “Giffy” and part of our family—and part Spike, part Spencer.

My relationship to dogs now is mostly to those I meet being walked by their owners in New York City. You can tell if a dog and its owner want to be spoken to and I respond to every wagging tail. The dogs are glad to see me even if they've never seen me before. Dogs are happy to be out for a walk; they love the whole world. What makes dogs so happy? Most get to eat only once a day, they're cooped up and alone much of the time and have little or no sex life. It doesn't matter. When they get to go for a walk they're happy all over.

I never pass a bulldog without stopping to talk. Owners are sometimes leery as I approach their dogs because they know a lot of people are afraid of so fierce looking an animal. It becomes instantly apparent that I know bulldogs and both the dog and the owner greet me warmly. When I'm driving along a street anywhere and see a bulldog, I pull to the curb and jump out of the car to talk to the dog. We're always instant best friends. It's like seeing Spike, Giffy and Spencer again.

It would be a better world if people were as nice, uncomplaining and easy to get along with as dogs.

I'm on sick leave, but I'm not leaving.

Until you've had some physical problem yourself, you're usually unaware that almost everyone you know has had the same thing before you did. If they haven't actually had it, their brother or their father or their best friend had it. Until I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, I had heard of it but thought it was a rare disease. Alas, it turns out to be as common as the common cold. Everyone I tell has had it or knows someone who has.

The tunnel is formed by eight bones at the base of the wrist and it carries the tendons that let the fingers move (I think). If the sheath that covers the tendon becomes irritated and swells, nothing works and everything hurts. Anyway, don't get it if you can help it.

This summer, during my so called “vacation,” I spent ten hours a day, seven days a week, finishing a book called
Common Nonsense
. I forget who came up with the title but that's it whether I like it or not. If it sells a lot of copies, I'll get to like the title.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is brought on my some repetitive action with your fingers and it was all that typing that brought on my problem. I'm about to have surgery on my right hand to correct it. If I could cross my fingers and hope everything comes out all right—which I can't—I would.

My doctor sent me to an orthopedist, who sent me to a hand specialist. Hand specialists don't have a name for themselves like dermatologists, cardiologists, urologists or gynecologists. They're special, though, because they don't do anything else. I have some foot problems and you'd think this hand surgeon could look into that, but they don't do feet.

Once my right hand heals after the surgery, I'm going to have to have my left hand done. I don't know how specialized these hand surgeons are. For all I know, I'll have to find someone else who just does left hands.

In anticipation of not being able to type for a few weeks, I bought something called Via Voice, made by IBM. Theoretically, you speak into a microphone and your voice comes out as words on the screen of your computer and you can print out the page.

“You talk, it types” reads the slogan on the box. Simple enough, right?

To test my new toy, I first read a fifteen-minute selection from
Treasure Island
that the manufacturer recommended as a way for the device to get familiar with the sound and inflections of my voice.

It appears as if my voice is not the one IBM had in mind when it made this device. Here's a sample. I was fooling around, ad-libbing, but this is what I said: “Each of us has more anniversaries than he or she has time to celebrate. Tonight marks my 24th year on
60 Minutes,
or I may be wrong about that. It may be my 23rd year, or perhaps even my 26th year, but frankly I don't give a damn.”

This is what came on the screen of my computer: “As more anniversaries and he\she has time to celebrate. Tonight marks I 24th year 16 at I may be wrong about that it maybe Irene 23rd year perhaps even my 26 year frankly I got now or dividend.”

You can see that IBM is not sympathetic to carpal tunnel sufferers and I'm going to have to find some other way to get my words down on paper. I'd demand my money back from IBM except what happened was probably partly my fault and anyway, I charged the new ViaVoice to CBS.

If I qualify as handicapped because of my carpal tunnel problem, I won't need wheelchair access, but they're going to have to make handicapped bottle tops that I can take off, handicapped doorknobs that I can twist, handicapped shoelaces that I can tie, handicapped shirts that I can button and handicapped newspapers whose pages I can turn.

Merry Christmas? Well, interesting but not all merry.

We were fifteen and assembled at our country house in the Helderberg Mountains of New York State, which look toward the Catskills. Two came from London, four from Los Angeles, four from Washington, two from Boston, two from Connecticut and one from Saratoga.

Everyone came bearing gifts and food. We had eleven loaves of rye, raisin, pumpernickel, sourdough and French bread. Emily and her daughter, Alexis, brought the twenty-five-pound turkey. We brought the ham for Christmas Eve. Martha had fixed beef stroganoff, which she brought from Washington. Les and Ellen got through airport security with an odoriferous wheel of Stilton.

Ben, Justin, Leo, Martha and I went to a local farm to buy an eightfoot balsam Christmas tree. That's all the living room ceiling will take. After it was trimmed. Ellen, the severest critic in our critical family, unendeared herself to us by saying it was “the worst tree we ever had.” She always says that. It's a Christmas tradition.

Snow started falling early Christmas morning. We opened our presents, merry enough, and by noon faced the snow piling up outside. Before it stopped, we were to get thirty-four inches, a lifetime experience for two young grandchildren who live in California.

I was determined to get the newspaper at a store 12 miles away. Les, our British son-in-law, volunteered to go with me so we took off in blizzard conditions in my old jeep. It was a bad decision. Halfway there, the snow was blinding and the windshield wipers were icing up so we stopped. I opened my door and stepped out. Under eight inches of snow, there was a sheet of ice. My left foot slipped out from under me and my right foot went under the car. The car door, still open, hit my head as it went over me. Briefly stunned, lying in the snow, I did not notice the car moving until it rolled over my right leg just two inches below the knee. I had inadvertently put it in reverse.

It seemed certain my leg was broken. The jeep was still backing down a slight incline and Les ran to it and stopped it 100 feet from where I'd
been run over. My leg hurt, but Les helped me up. I could hobble and concluded the bone might not have been crushed because of the cushion of snow. We continued to the store, bought the newspaper and made it home.