by Dominick Basile

Created on: July 06, 2009

An Ordeal

As I grow old (I could've said, as I age, but age seems to denote something delicious, a compendium of gathered wisdom whereas old says pooped, tired, slow, right-lane-driver flying a white handkerchief) my body falls way behind what my brain conjures.

For example:

1) With some half-dozen hours of certified flying time (me, the pilot, the guy in the right seat or behind me is the instructor) in my three-quarter-century existence I still dream, Mittyesque, of roaring my Piper Cub safely down to a three-point landing. I suffer from a not rare ocular dysfunction so my flying is not likely to happen; but so what? On summer days, lashed by a warm breeze off the ocean and knocked trance-like by the sound of a light, single-engine plane moving above me, I will plop down and recall my last flight in a Cessna 170.

2) Again with many years of experience driving automobiles, trucks and various other ground-clawing vehicles in daylight, storm light and no light, I now find that a simple drive home from either of our son's Connecticut homes has become an ordeal. This curve is to the right? The right lane indicators are covered by grass, leaves, debris uncleared by the DOT: do I drive by left-lane dividers or the wires barely visible liming the roadway or just keep pressuring my eyes to do a job they are becoming physically impossible to do?

3) The basement shows signs of dampness; showing some signs of initiative I go out and purchase a dehumidifier. It is heavy and the young store clerk lifts it into the trunk of my car. Strike one. It's daylight, so the drive home is easy enough and I get out my handcart and wrestle the appliance onto the cart and navigate the laden handcart to the steps leading to the basement. Fourteen eight-inch-steps, a fairly steep descent. Strike two. I secure the appliance to the cart with straps and Gerry rig with a rope and a pulley a device that allows me to lower the cart and appliance, one-step-at-a-time to the basement door entrance. Once inside I find that appliance will collect and store water, but I must empty the storage bin myself. It is not automatic. Another job! Strike three.

4) But, conjurer that I am, I immediately attempt to devise a way to automatically pump the stored water to a drain, anywhere, so long as the dampness is removed from the basement.. A few hours of analyzing and I hit upon a solution: Raise the dehumidifier to the ceiling, attach a plastic pipe to the appliance, thus bypassing the storage bin, and then run the pipe to the pump that was attached to the house outflow. The brain having done her part the hands are now expected to cut pipe, clean edges and spread glue. Three strikes, you're out. Glue is affixed to fingers, fingers are affixed to pipes and pipes are affixed to elbows, plastic and otherwise. A dark and dirty night ensues.

5) But the fauxs are not simply physical. You know the round thing I mentioned earlier, that little metal wheel threaded with a nice three-quarter inch line, that thing that helped me lower the dehumidifier to the basement level one-step-at-a-time? The pulley! It took at least that much time and that much mental finagling before my grandson came in and saved the day:

Pulley, grandpa.

And the days saunter by.

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