Home From Office After 13-Day Pause for Repairs { icy pavement refused to bend }

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 21, 1952

   WELL, I finally got home from the office--on one leg. It was a tough, 13-day journey, with a side trip to St. Barnabus hospital consuming most of the time.  There I acquired a pair of crutches, a metal gizmo for the hip joint, and the assurance that in three months I'd be as good as ever.

   The hospital stay was made necessary when my posterior came into violent contact with Park avenue at Fifth street.  I went down a couple of days ahead of the Flying Enterprise, but with a bit less fanfare.  At any rate, something had to give and it turned out to be my carcass, not the pavement.

   A Good Samaritan in a Cadillac, in whose debt I shall forever be, took over from there.  He helped me into his car and headed for the repair shop, picking up my daughter en route.  She had been waiting for me to take her home.  Anxious to reassure her mother that my chances of living were good, she phoned home from the hospital.

   "Oh, he's all right," she said   "He just can't walk."

   I SPENT a couple of years on an x-ray table and then was put in "traction."  This is where they tuck you into bed with a pulley and a rope and suspend a weight from your foot.  There also was a trapeze overhead by which I could pull myself up and give the upper half of the old cadaver a measure of mobility.

   On the operation itself I can touch but lightly.  I know little more about it than if I hadn't been there.  I was dimly conscious of being wheeled into surgery in a high state of dopiness and not giving a hoot whether they put me back together or sawed me in two.

   Then the wife's voice was cutting through the fog, telling me the operation was finished.  I was sure she was crazy but lay an exploratory hand on my hip just to make certain.  It was bandaged.  I heaved a sigh of relief.  Well, the worst was over.

   But it wasn't.  Lying in bed for days on the flat of the back was worse.  And insomnia was definitely worse.  Sleep was impossible.  Every night was a month long.  The nurses, I'm sure, wished I would die.  Lower the head of the bed a little.  Raise it up.  Get me some fresh water.  Put another pillow under my knee, please.  Put a blanket on me.  Gad, now it's getting hot.  How about some more water?  And take off that blanket.

   AND SO ON AND ON through the witching hours.  Burning cigarets until the mouth tasted like a rabbit hutch, reading whodunits until the eyes smoked, perspiring and having chills, looking at the watch and praying for 6 o'clock to come, when you could get your wash water and start the new day.

   I never suspected the time would ever come when I hated a bed.  How nice it would be, I used to think, to spend a winter under the covers in blissful hibernation, wallowing in rest.

   Now I have put away such pining.  A bed, I find, can be a prison, a torture rack.  You grow to welcome the little distractions that take your mind off the thing.  Washing the teeth becomes fun.  Mowing the whiskers and combing the hair are high adventure.

   But hospital residence has its bright side, too.  The food I got was tasty and bountiful.  Every meal was a delight.  Your friends rally 'round.  They bear gifts to your bedside and tell you how well you're looking and you enjoy their lies.

   Comes then the happy day when you can ease yourself out of bed unaided and crutch down the corridor to the room of some fellow patient.  There you can speak freely about operations.  You have a captive audience.

   I SAVE THE BEST for the last--the nurses, and palpitate pleasantly as I ponder this phase of hospital tenure.  The gals who tended me were not only efficient, they were definitely on the side of pulchritude.  This was right down my alley.  I have ever saluted beauty and was prepared to do so again.  Though handicapped by an abbreviated nightie and an elastic bandage extending from hip to toe I set about spreading charm.

   One who is well along on the wrong side of 40 should have no illusions about his ability to charm a cutie half his age but I have never let this handicap divert me from the old college try.

   I plied the nurses with candy, nuts and other tidbits which my ever-loving wife kept in constant supply--maintaining a patter of conversation the while, and hoping for developments.  Honesty compels me to confess that the only development was on me.  I found myself going into emotional flaps every time one of the fairer angels of mercy rammed a thermometer into my face or took my pulse.

   I DO NOT GUESS that my better half was unduly concerned, or even aware, that I was playing Romeo in my feeble way.  The oldster can do little, anyway, but add to his supply of dream stuff and, if circumstance fans the graying embers of fancy a bit, it can make no real difference.  And nobody knows this better than the oldster's wife.

   I am crutching my way over the hill, I know.  But should the day ever come when badinage with a lovely blonde lacks stimulation, when the flashing smile of a red-head fails to stir the toothless wolf within me, I hope that I slip again on the ice and that this time I fall on my head.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.