How The Game Is Played

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I don't like bars. That's not to say I'm against drinking. I'm half Irish. Often, my cup is at least half full.

I love football. You'd know that only from talking to me about football and only if you brought up the subject, or from reading a column such as this.

You wouldn't know it because you saw me in a drinking establishment with a gazillion bar stool quarterbacks watching (and coaching) the game on a Big Screen TV.  No, you won't see me there.

I will watch any NFL or Division I-A college football game any time. It's not a personal prerequisite that I be a fan of one team or the other.

I watch from home where I am the sole football fan (and beer drinker). I will adjust to any chair in front of any TV in the house. It makes no difference. 

Over the years, bars have become too trendy. They have become Theme Bars, usually called Sports Bars and they have cute names like "Sluggers" and "The Dugout" and "The End Zone", and any town of any size has them.

As Jimmy Durante used to say, "Ev'rybuddies try'n ta get into da act." Everybody has a gimmick. I guess that's just part of the Wide World of Commerce.

When I first drank legally and socially, it was in a bar in Fullerton, Nebraska, the town where I lived. Fullerton boasted a population of less than 1500 citizens and the bar was called, quite simply,  J&L Tavern. That was before the age of cable and dish TV and Pay-Per-View and if J&L Tavern even had a television set above the bar, it was probably a 19" Black-and-White model.

If you wanted to talk sports, you could talk baseball with the bartender, Bags Umstead. He was a good bartender with a great memory. Once you'd drank at J&L, Bags could match any face with its drinking pleasure.

Bags knew baseball. That's how his nickname originated. He not only knew the sport, he could have played it. Instead, he ended up tending bar at J&L Tavern in Fullerton, Nebraska, population 1400-something.

There was probably a sad story there. But that's what life is. People and their stories, happy or sad.

Hoisting a couple of beers at the bar or in a booth at J&L was tolerable.  Pleasant, actually. The tavern had that small town ambiance and the patrons were good company.

Mainly, no one there put on airs. I don't like putting on airs.

In his memoir, "A Drinking Life", writer Pete Hamill recounts how he got through his first few weeks without booze by reciting these words every morning: "I will live my life from now on, I will not perform it."

I've thought about that often. We are performers.

Even Shakespeare said, "The whole world's a stage".  He knew.

Sometimes none of us are real. We all have an innate talent for acting and that's how we react to life and its slapdash twists of fate.

Perhaps when we get to heaven, there will be an Academy Awards type of ceremony and we'll all be nominated. I hope I don't win.

When I sat in a bar like J&L Tavern, I didn't feel like I was waiting in the wings. My friends and I conversed, we listened to the jukebox, we played shuffleboard. It would generally be a quiet, good time.

Beer was two bits a draw and if we were hungry, a buck and a quarter could get us a good burger and some pretty tasty French fries. No nachos, no tortilla chips and salsa, no fancy drinks with paper umbrellas and snickering ha-ha names like "Sex on the Beach", "Hanky Panky", or "Flaming Volcano".

The Sports Bar today offers a much different milieu than the small town J&L Tavern of yesterday. With fully staffed kitchens touting grand Tex-Mex menus, bartenders who will concoct anything you want to drink and offer up a name for it as well, and a half dozen ESPN-locked TVs viewable from any chair in the joint, the Sports Bars are rocking.

But one thing they lack is intimacy. Because people don't live life, they perform it.

People like to be on and a Sports Bar is just another backdrop to act out life against. There will be a stage full of noisy fellow actors there, brimming with liquor and hot wings, and the Big Game will bring out the worst of both insecurity and arrogance in the room.

Each play will be sent around the tables for review and a subsequent faulty analysis by some of the most brazenly vocal, yet unknowledgeable fans in the city. The biggest and most empty barrels can be found on any given Game Day in any given Sports Bar.

Not only do they not know how to enjoy a game, they don't know how to drink. But the Sports Bar is their stage. So they act.

And I stay home, where I can enjoy a few beers in peace and listen to the play-by-plays and analyses of qualified professionals.

If I want to have a drink with friends, I'd just as soon seek out a bar like J&L Tavern, where there is no pretentiousness, no Big Screen TV, no fancy cocktails, and no roaring crowd.

And if I want to talk Sports, I'll talk to the bartender who has a sad story and doesn't tell it. But he sure knows the game.

---

Copyright Wendel Potter

Humor Put On Hold

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This column appeared in the Grand Island (Nebraska) Independent on September 12, 2001.  At that time, I was writing a weekly humor column for the newspaper and the 9/11 attacks occurred just as I was putting the finishing touches on that week's column.  

We all have memories of where we were when we heard the dreadful news.  This is the column I ended up writing for publication:

Good morning.  It's Tuesday, September 11, 2001 as I write this.

This morning, I was about to email  my editor with the final draft of this week's column, a screed about the state of this past weekend's college football events.

It was infused with humor, the type of writing I generally perform in this space on Wednesday.  It's what's expected of me.  I had worked many hours on the piece and was happy with the outcome.

But prior to hitting the send button,  I glanced at my TV which was tuned to MSNBC and what I saw and heard numbed me. You know the story, and it will have been updated thousands of times between now as I write this and tomorrow when this column appears in the hands of my readers.

While humor can be a saving grace in difficult times, and it has always been the proud American way to carry on with a brave face, I felt personally that it would be unconscionable to greet my Wednesday morning readers with tongue in cheek, and so asked my editor to extend my deadline that I may produce something more palatable, given the horrific times in which we are now awash.
 
At this time (Tuesday), I have no idea what lies ahead for our country in the face of the heinous and blistering attacks that have served lethal notice on the United States. It just isn't a time to laugh.

At this early point in time, there is no "best medicine" to bind the wounds that have been inflicted by such inhuman savagery. And what concerns me is the aftermath.

And that aftermath, folks, will perpetually linger in the seams of a dark, dragging cloud of fear and hysteria because the United States is a symbol for all that is good and free and that makes it a target for everything that is evil and corrupt and barbaric.

This morning, in the midst of trying to make sense of this jagged puzzle thrust on us by terrorists of the worst variety, I received word that Grand Island Senior High had been evacuated, but had not heard why. Having a child enrolled there, I jumped in my pickup and headed across town, thinking that students were probably being dismissed early, as a precaution, in light of the attack on our country.

When I drew near to the school, I spotted a city police officer involved in the task of keeping traffic off that stretch of College Street that runs past the south side of the high school. I pulled over to the curb and got out of my truck to ask him about the details of the evacuation, as it appeared that now throngs of students were re-entering the school.
 
The officer confirmed that school officials had received an anonymous bomb threat.  He assured me that everything was all right and classes would be resuming according to routine.

I suspect that this won't be the only bomb threat phoned in to schools and institutions across the nation today. There are sick people out there who thrive on this type of malevolent upheaval and disorder and while they may have no intention of actually carrying out their threats, they have murderous hearts nevertheless.

I am appalled, perhaps naively so, that this type of thing would happen in this community--here in the Heartland, in the middle of Nebraska The Good Life--and that, while we watch our national state of affairs with nail-biting interest and unease, we also have to lend credence to the catcalls of a lame and twisted mindset that apparently exists right here in any one of our neighborhoods.

What has happened to our society that we must not only dread the sophisticated treachery of the outside world, but also must have our fears and anxieties compounded by the psychotic actions of a few degenerates existing unworthily as fellow-citizens within the fabric of our very community and who get their obscene jollies from disrupting the lives of school administrators, faculty,  and a couple of thousand students -- not to mention their concerned families -- in the wake of a national alert?

This is a time when Americans need to stand together and work to somehow get past this tragic episode in our nation's history. It's certainly not a time to mine some kind of perverted humor by creating even more calamity for our countrymen. And those who do are criminal punks of the lowest order.

I wish we could have shared a laugh today. But nothing is funny.

Maybe next week. I'm afraid it's going to take a little time.

__________

Applesauce and Arthritis: A Hands On Experience

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My dad had it.  He took pills.

My mom had it. She suffered in silence.

And now, I must have it. I don't take pills. But I refuse to be silent. So I'll get it out of my system now: "OWWWWWW!"

Next weekend, I'm having another birthday.  No, birthdays are not what my dad took pills for. Well, if he did, they must have worked. He hasn't had a birthday in 25 years.

I don't want any pills, though. I don't want to stop having birthdays. I just don't want any festivities.

Every year, my wife celebrates my birthday by baking a Black Forest Cake. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a two-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, cherries, and whipped cream. For that, it would be worth having several birthdays a year.

But, I've reached that age now when birthdays have begun to serve notice on the human condition. Oh, it's nothing that magically strikes you on the very anniversary of your birth. It happens gradually over time, but birthdays are a reminder that you're getting older. 

And you're experiencing pain.

The thing I feel I have that my parents both had is arthritis. Or maybe it's rheumatism. I've never been real clear on the difference between the two. Who knows? Maybe I have both.

Whatever it is I have, I'm convinced I have it because it hurts.

"Where does it hurt?" you might ask. That's what a doctor might ask, too, if I bothered to see a doctor.

To you, I'd respond, "In my joints." End of response.

If I saw a doctor, I'd respond, "In my joints ... and now my pocketbook."

So you see, it's less painful if I tell you and not a doctor.

And if my doctor is reading this, now he knows where I hurt. And he can't charge me for it.

Now, the reason I bring all of this up is because of the heck of a time I had the other evening while trying to open a jar of applesauce.

I was making my famous Applesauce Pork Chops. Obviously, my recipe calls for applesauce. I had just purchased a large family size jar of it that morning at the grocery store.

I prepared my chops in my special coating and laid them out on a baking pan. The final step before baking was to spread applesauce over the chops.

I gripped the fat jar of applesauce in my left hand and grasped the cap in my right hand and twisted. The lid didn't budge.

After several unsuccessful twists, my right hand was aching. Which it does when I grip anything for any length of time.

Not to be defeated, however, I held the jar in the crook of my arm for more leverage. I twisted. More aching. The jar lid was stubborn. My hand was growing weaker.

I ran the jar under water. I rapped the lid with the handle of a table knife. All the tricks my arthritic mother taught me.

This baby was definitely sealed at the factory for freshness. And I was losing my grip!  


Finally, the lid worked loose and we had applesauce on our pork chops. Of course, my dear wife had to cut up my chops for me because I couldn't hold a knife in my aching hand.

So what are the applesauce manufacturers in America thinking when they screw the jar lids permanently on their product? Do they want us arthritic folks eating their applesauce or not?

Oh, we could buy the cutesy little six pack of applesauce in the 2-ounce plastic tubs with the easy, tear open foil top. But have you compared the price of those six-packs to a family size jar? You get a total of 12 tablespoons of applesauce at three times what you pay for the big jar!

But you can't open the big jar! Your hand hurts too much! And now you've wasted the money! So what good is it?

That, folks, is the trick! You're forced to buy the more expensive applesauce. And you may as well take the big jar and give it to a food drive and pray to God it doesn't end up in the hands of some penniless, arthritic nomad who dies of starvation in a back alley somewhere while desperately trying to pry off the lid!

I don't know about you, but I've decided that, as I get older and my hands get more arthritic, I will live without applesauce rather than pay through the nose for the easy-open six-pack. There are other, more accessible fruits, you know!

Anyone for my famous Banana Pork Chops?


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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WENDEL AND THE OPEN ROAD: DRIVING DRIVES ME CRAZY

________

Call it age, call it my own surly brand of nonconformity, call it what you will, but I'm getting to where I just don't care about driving long distances anymore. 

Given the ever-increasing volume of traffic in our congested city, I can get a little uptight just driving across town. At times, a trip to the grocery store can seem like a road trip to hell.

Of course there's the usual mindless maniacs who reinforce these notions. You know, like people who are paying more attention to their cell phones than to the middle of the road down which they are driving. 

Then there's your average tailgater who's just an accident waiting to happen -- and I hope it doesn't involve my tail gate. I don't need that kind of tailgate party.

How about the motorist who sees fit to haphazardly toss a burning cigarette out the window and into the street -- where it rolls under my vehicle! (Hey! I drive junk! I could have a gasoline leak, you know!) 

And let's not leave out the knuckleheads who've decided that stop lights are not meant for them.

These are just a few examples. It's not that we've never had drivers like these before out there on our roads. It's just that there's now so many of them. They have multiplied like rabbits and there's just not enough blacktop to accommodate their species.

I have to admit, though, that my wife apparently doesn't consider me to be the greatest driver on the road, either. I noticed she's put a bumper sticker on my car that says, "How's my driving? If you don't feel I'm driving in a safe manner, then please call my wife and she'll come and get me." She has her own 800 number for just such an emergency.

It also doesn't help that I can't see as well as I used to. Oh, I can pass the DMV's eye examination with flying colors. But then, so could Stevie Wonder.

Driving at night is particularly bothersome. So I avoid it as much as I can.

Thirty years ago, there was just nothing like driving at night. If I was heading out on a trip, I'd opt for taking off in the early evening and driving throughout most of the night time hours. It was relaxing.

Not these days, my friends. If I can help it, the car is going into the garage at sundown and staying put until dawn.

Now when I retire, I'd really like to do some traveling around this great country of ours. I just don't know if I'll be up to driving at all by then.

The Greyhound Bus company used to advertise with this slogan: Take the bus and leave the driving to us.

That sounds tempting. But I've just never liked buses. You always end up surrounded by the same assortment of characters on a bus: a screaming child, a wino who's wet his pants or a half-crazy person who mumbles incoherently and thinks he sees bats.

In the movies, the bus' passenger list always included a playful little boy in a cowboy hat, a subdued hippie with a guitar, two nuns and a Marine. They were always harmless.

I've never ridden on that bus.

Former NFL coach and retired football broadcaster John Madden prefers the bus. He hates to fly.

But John Madden OWNS his bus. And it's like a small ranch-style house on wheels. He probably keeps two nuns and a Marine on retainer just to ride along.

And John Madden doesn't have to drive the bus. He pays someone to do that. And it's not Stevie Wonder.

I've always had a fascination with the Open Road. But I guess I should have pursued my journeys long ago, when I was younger and the highways and the byways were safer. And the Road was much more Open.

Charles Kuralt was one of my journalistic heroes. Or maybe I just envied him.

Kuralt drove around in a motor home (I'm sure it was at the expense of the CBS television network) and filed heartwarming little stories from towns all over the nation, some that weren't even a dot on a map. 

But while putting in all that windshield time, he saw the country and met its people and that was called work. Nice work if you can get it.

Now that Charles Kuralt is gone, maybe there's a lane open somewhere out there on the road for a wandering writer, one who wants to see every corner of his native land and meet interesting people and file heartwarming stories.

I'm ready to go. All I need now to fulfill my dream is a motor home, a map (forget the GPS--I'm old-fashioned) and a laptop computer.

Oh, and a driver. Anybody know what Stevie Wonder is doing these days?



Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

________

Dylan, Dog of Choice

________ 

 

 

 

It's been five years this week that we let our dog go.  This is the column I wrote shortly afterwards.

Dylan, the coal black Retriever, died a couple of weeks ago. He was over 13 years old, but he hadn't lost much of his step. Then he got real sick in a real hurry. We barely had time to tell him goodbye.

We got Dylan when he was a day shy of five weeks. My wife and sons begged for a puppy.

They had to beg because I was never a dog person and was adamant that we not have a pet. I grew up with a fear of dogs, then developed a plain dislike for them.

You might understand how pathetic it is to see two small boys and their mother begging. You finally cave in just so they'll stop following you all over, crawling on their knees and wringing their hands.

It was embarrassing. Especially at the supermarket.

So I gave them the green light and they located a gentleman across town who was giving away puppies and they brought one home. He was a tiny, trembling ball of fur so black you could barely see his eyes. They named him Dylan.

"How did you happen to choose this one?" I asked my youngest son, who was six at the time.

"I didn't choose him," Ryan said. "He chose me."

Then Dylan chose me.

We became friends and it lasted a long, long time.

I could tell you all kinds of stories about Dylan, but most of them would mimic stories you've heard time and again from other dog owners. It's like the proud father who never stops showing wallet pictures of his kids. There's no point in being overbearing about my dog and his canine antics.

Besides, I made Dylan famous in the pages of the Sunday edition of our local newspaper.  I wrote a weekly column for the paper for nearly ten years and many, many times I wrote about my dog. Folks in this community got acquainted with Dylan.

In those newspaper stories, Dylan was always smarter than me. He was philosophical and wise. He spoke a language I understood and he drank beer.

I may have stretched the truth in those columns, however. Although, he really did like beer and in some respects he really was a hell of a lot smarter than me.

Spring and summer with Dylan were my favorite times. I would spend a lot of time in the back yard. He was always perched next to my lawn chair. I could sit there and pet him for hours. He would let me.

Dylan slept in the garage in his big pet carrier. I let him out every morning. I let him in every night. Over 13 years...that's a lot of mornings and a lot of nights.

My oldest son, Adam, fed Dylan every afternoon right on schedule. Over 13 years...that was a lot of afternoons.

I still have to remind myself not to go out to the garage in the morning and let the dog out.

Some afternoons, Adam still catches himself on his way to fill Dylan's supper dish.

My wife still glances out the kitchen window looking to see if Dylan is curled up in his favorite spot along the shady side of the garage.

On his way to work in the mornings, Ryan still stops at the gate and looks twice before he realizes that Dylan isn't going to come bounding up for a goodbye hug.

Dylan's water bowl and supper dish, his leash and his rubber ball, along with his big pet carrier, are all in the garage.

It's the back yard that's so empty.

---

Copyright 2006 Wendel Potter

WENDEL'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE CONTINUED: THE HERNIA CHRONICLES

________

 PART TWO

 
(If you haven't read Part One of my adventures in surgery, please scroll down.  Part One is published below, following Part Two)


The echocardiogram was done later in the week at Saint Francis Medical Center, our local hospital.  I always feel more confident when a hospital bears the name of a holy person. 

Being a Catholic and a great believer in saints, I was a little miffed that Francis himself couldn’t take the time to stop by and wish me well.  I guess he was too busy out in the meditation garden shaking those damn birds off his finger.

The echocardiogram required me to lie on my side, with wires taped to my chest.  The technician then rested an ultrasonic wand on various parts of my upper torso while she dialed up digital images on a machine.  My heart in all its beating glory appeared on a screen.

There were reds, blues, and greens shooting across the image.  “It looks like the Weather Channel’s Dopplar radar,” I said.

My wife, who was watching from a chair across the room, said, “And I think you’re suffering from an upper level disturbance.”

As it turned out, the echocardiogram revealed nothing serious.  The worst part were the jitters leading up to it.

I had imagined the worst, which as I understood, would be a leaky heart valve.  That would require surgery far more serious than a hernia repair.

But that was not the case and I got the okay to proceed with the surgery I had signed up for.  Suddenly, I was ecstatic that I was having my hernia repaired.  In no way did I want to title this column The Hernia (and Heart) Chronicles!

So I was told to report back a week later to Saint Francis (the hospital, not the guy) for the real deal.  I was given my instructions and sent on my un-merry way.

Surprisingly, these days the pre-op restrictions aren’t that bad.  I didn’t have to begin my fast until midnight.  I always fast after midnight.  It’s fasting during Lent that kills me.

The evening before, we enjoyed our routine Sunday chicken dinner.  I have to admit, my appetite wasn’t particularly whetted. 

I did not relish the idea that, within 14 hours, I’d be anesthetized.  That would be a new experience for me. 

Painless?  Oh, sure.  Waking up afterwards?  Sorry, no guarantees.

I began to wonder if this could be my final meal! You’d think, with that in mind, I’d take seconds or maybe even thirds. 

Just in case this truly would be the last supper.

But when the meal was over, instead of breaking bread and giving it to my disciples, I told my wife,  “I want pie.”

And there was pie.  And it was good. 

I ate the last piece at 11:59.

We arrived at the hospital bright and early the next morning.  I was immediately shown to what would be my recovery room. 

Oh good!  Apparently, they expected me to recover!

The nurses stopped by to check my blood pressure and my pulse, to draw blood and to bore a hole in my wrist.  This is where they would put the IV (or 4, as I like to call it) that would relax me just before they killed me.

Before long, I was led to a comfortable bed with warm sheets.  The IV was started and within seconds, I was truly relaxed. 

I can’t tell you much about what happened next.  I remember a mask being placed over my face.

If they asked me to count to ten backwards or some such nonsense as that, I didn’t hear them.  I had my own recitation prepared:

“Now I lay me down to sleep……..”

An hour later I was back in the recovery room and was offered coffee and toast.  The coffee was a welcome beverage after the fast.

The toast was a different story.  I think St. Francis himself baked it, back when he was still alive in the 13th century.

My wife said I dozed off a lot during the course of the afternoon.  One nurse was concerned that I wasn’t responding as brightly as she would liked to have seen.


Well, excuse me!  I'm sorry I couldn't have been more chipper...maybe performed a song and dance for the entire surgery ward!

Then there was the matter of plumbing.  She told my wife that they wouldn’t dismiss me until I had peed.

I’m here to tell you.  When you’ve had very little to drink over a 12-15 hour period, and you did your stand up latrine duty a few times, the last just before being taken to the surgery room…..well, the bladder is empty and it’s sending no signal to the brain or anywhere else.

Not to mention that every time I stood in that cold hospital john, I started getting the shakes so bad, I was questioning whether this was actually St. Francis Hospital or the Betty Ford Center.

By late afternoon, the nurse ordered a bladder scan.  I was hooked up to a machine and the technician proceeded to move a wand around my abdominal area.

“Hmmmm,” she said.

I’ve never liked the word hmmmm when used by someone in the medical profession.  It often telegraphs concern.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m not getting a reading,” she said.  She smiled.  “I guess you have no bladder.”

“It’s probably shriveled up and turned to dust,” I said.

Finally, she hit pay dirt.  Yes, I had a bladder and, while not much, there was something sloshing around in there.

So the nurse called my surgeon with the report.  He explained that I wasn’t holding enough to create any urges and to send me home.

Which she did.  And late that evening, Wendel’s Waterworks returned to a normal state.

Had I known the nurse's home phone number, I would have called her at home and got her out of bed, just to report the happy news.

It’s been nearly three weeks now.  I’m returning to work on Monday.

I’ve gotten kind of used to hanging out at home, resting in a recliner and hitting the correct buttons on the remote without even looking.

I’ve made friends with Regis and Kelly, the ladies from The View, and got to see Oprah’s Farewell.   I’m getting caught up on the news and my reading.  I’ve had some great conversations with my friends on Facebook.

But now its time to return to life as I knew it, which was doctor-free (and there are two words that rarely go together).

I’ve had enough excellent adventures to last me the rest of my life.


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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WENDEL'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE: THE HERNIA CHRONICLES

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PART ONE

Inguinal hernia--hernia in which a loop of intestine enters the inguinal canal; the most common type of hernia in males
                                                                            ------Webster’s Dictionary

“This f**king hurts!”
                                  -------Noah Webster





It all started a couple of weeks ago when I paid our family physician a visit because I had developed a noticeable bulge inside my pants.  Unfortunately, this bulge wasn’t of the nature that would make most men proud.

My doctor told me to drop my drawers.  He put on a latex glove with that clinical, resounding snap that brings you to attention and then he proceeded to examine the….well, testicular area.

In the old days, doctors always prefaced this examination with this command:  “Turn your head and cough”.  My doctor apparently felt I was well mannered enough not to hack in his face, so he just said, “Cough”.

“You have a hernia,” he told me.  “And next time, turn your head before you cough.  It’s the cold and flu season!”

I asked him why, if a hernia appeared to pop out in the pelvic area, was it necessary to feel my gonads.  He said nothing but wore a glimmer of a smile.  I hoped I wasn’t being scammed.

Of course, I knew what the next step was.  He was going to prescribe magic pills that would cause the hernia to disappear in 3-5 days to never return.

That step was bypassed.  He recommended surgery!

“Well,” I told my wife, “this shoots my track record all to hell!”

58 years old and I’d never spent a minute inside of a hospital except for visiting.  Visit the sick is what the nuns told us to do in Catholic school.  I didn’t mind that rule, because it made it good to be the visitors and not the patients.

Visiting the sick was one of the “corporal works of mercy” that the Catholic church said we should perform.  The Church also said, “But stay out of the goddamn hospital gift shop.  Those prices will eat you alive!”

This is why I like to do my hospital visiting shortly after Memorial Day.  On the way to the hospital, I can drive through the cemetery and pick up some really nice flowers.  Quite affordable that way.

So the next day, it was off to the surgeon for a consultation.  Actually, my wife chose this particular doctor because she knew him and his family personally. 

He seemed pleasant enough, but what bothered me was his name:  Dr. Goering. 

Goering, Goering….hmmm.  My mind was racing through its index and checking its files under “World War II”.

Ah, yes!  I thought, Could he be related somehow to Hermann Goering, the head of the German armed forces during World War II and sadistic henchman to Adolph Hitler?

Possibly from the same family as that same Hermann Goering who was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and who cowardly committed suicide by taking cyanide rather than face execution?

Well, at least he saved the taxpayers a few bucks, I’ll give him that.

So I tested the "good" doctor.  “How are things in the Luftwaffe?” I asked craftily.

He looked at my wife and asked,  “Is he currently taking any medication or perhaps fallen on his head recently?”

My wife twirled her finger in a big circle alongside her head and rolled her eyes in my direction.
 
Surely there could be no family ties between the evil Goering and this surgeon, I tried convincing myself.

But then…. he got out the latex glove, slipped it over a pair of vise grips and latched on to the fellas down below like there was no tomorrow!  He didn’t even ask me to cough, let alone turn my head!

Good thing, too.  I couldn’t have coughed.  My esophagus was paralyzed.

He squeezed some more.

Now that my cahones felt like a couple of tangerines in a Cuisinart, I decided that there was no way Dr. Goering could share the family tree with the notorious Hermann.  This guy was way too brutal.

[Note to reader:  the following italicized remarks are my thoughts only and not audible, verbal expressions.  This was not because I didn’t want the doctor to hear me.  Rather, as a result of what felt like having my testicles run over by a dump truck,  I was rendered speechless and barely able to take a deep breath for several hours.]

“You have two hernias,” he happily announced.  “What I’ll do is a laparoscopy.”

There you go, talking secret German code!

“First I’ll make an incision under the belly button.”

Ah ha!  A naval attack!

“Then I go in with a camera…”

Oh crap, this is going to be on YouTube!  All it will take is one Tweet from this guy and my hernia surgery will go viral!  Broadcast throughout the Nazi underground!

“Once I can see the hernias, I’ll make two smaller incisions and go in and repair them.”

“How do you repair them?” my wife asked.

“When I’m inside, we’ll inflate his abdomen with gas.”

Couldn’t I just drink a couple of beers?  But no, he’s using a special gas!  The Nazis know all about those things!

“This allows me to see what’s going on inside his body.  I’ll push the protruded parts back inside the cavity, then insert a mesh lining.”

Sounds like he’s trying to catch mosquitoes!

“The mesh serves as a protective patch.”

Oh sure!  A patch that will systematically release an agent to my brain that will make me spill top government secrets!  Well, Goering, you’ll get nothing from me!

Dr. Goering asked me to hop up on the examining table.  He turned away and grabbed a stethoscope.  “You can sit up,” he said.  “You don’t need your feet in those stirrups.”

I told him the Kentucky Derby was coming up that Saturday and I was into interactive participation and I was getting into the feel of things.

“I just want to listen to your heart.”  He told me to take some deep breaths.

You’ve got to be kidding!

“Did you know you had a murmur?” he asked.

“Isn’t that one of those guys who dresses in black face and women‘s clothes?  They have a big parade in Philadelphia every New Year‘s Day.”

“That’s a Mummer,” he said.  “I’m hearing a murmur.”

The only murmur you’re hearing is the one sweeping through the Nazi-hunting crowd that’s gathered outside your door with pitchforks and bloodhounds.  They’ve found you out, Dr. Goering!

“What I’d like to do,” he said, “is make an appointment for you to have an echocardiogram.  It’s like an ultrasound of the heart that can show us how well the blood is pumping.  I don’t want to proceed with surgery until I know your heart is in good condition.”

This brought me to attention like the snapping of no latex glove could ever do.  Suddenly I felt no pain below my waist.  As a matter of fact, I felt nothing below my waist.

“My heart?” I asked.  “No doctor has ever heard a heart murmur inside my chest.  What does it mean?”

“Generally nothing, but for a murmur to develop this late in life, it’s best to check it out before we put you under anesthesia.”

Suddenly, Dr. Goering seemed like a decent, concerned individual.  He made some notes on my chart, then told us that his nurse would contact me with the day and time for my echocardiogram.

“The truth, doc,” I insisted.  “Do you think it’s anything serious?”

He shrugged and said, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

COMING SOON:  THE HERNIA CHRONICLES,  PART 2

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