In the 1990s, I was involved in a head-on collision. I spent 8 days in the Intensive Care Unit, and that's something very few people can say. Most people either move to a regular floor within 48 hours, or else they draw the sheet over the head.

My girlfriend at the time, an RN, kept telling me that God Has A Reason for keeping me alive, that there was something he wanted me to do. Since then, I've tried to explain God's plan to people, especially those who worship Jesus instead of God, but I don't think I get through very often. But maybe that wasn't what I am supposed to do. You see, since then, I've had premonitions every so often, often about incredibly trivial matters, but they've been 100% true.

Rudyard Kipling Slept Here

Well, they've been 100% true in a Rudyard Kipling fashion. He wrote, "I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards." Sometimes, I had to look at the premonition in hindsight to understand it. Yeah, right. Helpful premonition, isn't it?

And sometimes, it's too late to do anything about it. I saw the first tower burning on 9/11 on a television in a hardware store. I turned to the guy to my left and said, "There's another plane coming, and it's gonna hit the other tower." Maybe 30 seconds later, it did. The guy looked at me, as if he was thinking, "Is he involved in this?"

And then, a few seconds later, I knew both buildings were going to collapse spectacularly. I kept my mouth shut; I didn't want to be locked up. I'd said too much already. But I said to myself, that doesn't make sense. I'd been to engineering school. The fire would soften and weaken the structural elements of the top of the buildings, and maybe the building would slowly burn down, but pancaking like it did, that didn't make sense. Properly engineered buildings, properly constructed, don't do that. And then later, we found out that the buildings were poorly designed and shoddily constructed, and while the airplanes might have been the proximate cause of the collapse, it wouldn't have happened if New York City had more competence and less corruption in their government.

So For Several Months

So anyhow, for several months, I have had a growing premonition that someone is going to attack me. I've been trying to dismiss it as paranoia, and trying to ignore it. I thought about going to the tractor store and buying a machete. I need to get rid of some brush growing in the back yard, anyway, so it's not like buying a gun or something that's obviously a weapon. I used to have a junior size baseball bat, maybe 18 inches long. That's a little long for a defensive weapon; you need room to swing something like that. I didn't want to buy a billy.

What I really need, I thought, is to cut down a softball bat - they're thicker than baseball bats - to about 12" or 14" long, and round the ends. And then I could buy some balls and go out to a park and toss the balls up with one arm, and swat fungoes with the other, and that'd give me some much-needed exercise. But I don't have a lathe, nor do I want to spend that kind of money, and even if someone gave me one for free, there'd be the chore of clearing off space on the workbench to use a lathe safely.

So I did nothing, even as the premonition grew in strength. Maybe a pawnshop might have something that would work as a defensive weapon if necessary, but have some other use, that I could justify buying it?

Wednesday Was A Rough Day

Wednesday was a really rough day. Blondie said the pain index must be high. Pain index? I don't know what that is, but my joints were stiff. Everything went wrong, and when things weren't going wrong, people were calling me on the phone and making outrageous demands. I'd have unplugged the Vonage adaptor from the router, and just let everything go to voicemail, except that I was expecting a couple of rather important calls - and, of course, those calls never came. The cat and the dog were being extremely annoying.

I'd been mentioning it to Blondie for several days that I was really craving some onion rings. When she called to say she was coming home, I asked her if we could go out and get some immediately upon her arrival, and she said OK. But when she arrived, the cat and the dog were acting like brother and sister, and my patience was gone. Blondie said, "Do we have to go out?" I told her that I've been craving for days, and I need the onion rings. Then Blondie started to snap the leash on the dog, and I said no, I wanted to leave the dog home. The dog never stays home, but as I said, my patience was shot, and just to fray that last nerve of mine, Blondie told the dog that Daddy was going out alone, and she would stay home and keep the dog company.

{Expletive deleted.}

Where To Go?

It's hard to find good onion rings these days. There are those strange things with chopped onions, and there are oh, I don't know, maybe a million different incredibly crappy ways to make something that's ring-shaped and vaguely onionish, but undeserving of being called onion rings. I wanted the kind of salty greasy onion rings that every greasy spoon had in the 1950s.

David and Sharon Prudhomme, from the same family as Paul, have incredible onion rings at the Lost Cajun Kitchen, even better than greasy spoon onion rings, but that's all the way over to Columbia, and they might have long lines even despite the recession. Lone Star Steakhouse had a good blooming onion, but they've been closed for a year or two. Outback Steakhouse has a good blooming onion, but they put so much seasoning on everything, you can't taste the beef in their steaks. You'd think they made their money selling beer to wash the taste out of your mouth. Oh, wait, they do.

And then I thought, Damon's. They have this "brick" of onionring, about the size of a very small loaf of bread. I used to live in Columbus, when Damon's was only found in Columbus, and they were always rowdy and fun, and everything was fixed well. They're too expensive for me now, but I was kinda POed at Blondie for making me go alone, so I didn't let that worry me. Besides, with just me, it would be cheaper.

Wish I'd Brought The Ipecac

Damon's was not crowded and rowdy and fun. They were pretty empty, and the only noise came from the TVs. (They have four TVs in sight, and each table has volume and select controls, so you can choose which TV to watch. They had Headline News with Nancy Graceless on one, trivia on a second, the Notre Dame/West Virginia game on the third, and baseball on the fourth set, but my vision was blocked to the baseball, and I could barely see the images on the other three, they were so far away.)

I ordered a brick of onion rings, and a half slab of ribs. Now, I must confess that not everything at Damon's was disappointing. The waitress was courteous and efficient, and came around and refilled my ice water and my Pepsi without my having to flag her down. If I owned a restaurant - heck, if I owned any business - I'd have tried to hire her.

And the salad was OK. Not the best I've ever had, but good tomatoes are impossible to find this time of year, and they did a nice job, considering the calendar.

Maybe It Was A Pygmy Pig

When I was living and working in Columbus, readers of the city magazine rated Damon's as the second-best place to get ribs. The number one choice? The Red Pig in Ottawa Ohio, which is about 3 hours away from Columbus. If they're as good as they used to be, the Red Pig is possibly the best ribs joint in the country. Folks in the Carolinas, or in Kansas City may console themselves that it's been about fifteen years since I've been there, but I doubt things have changed.

Their full rack of ribs must have been 2 feet long, and 7-8" wide at the middle. Most other restaurants seem to have a full rack that's 18" or 20" long, and 6" wide in the middle. It appears that they must use pygmy pigs at Damons, because my half-slab was six inches long, and four inches wide.

There's a joke about the lady in a nursing home who complains to relatives, the food here, it's terrible, it's like poison. And such small portions! I ate one bone off the end of the ribs. It was terrible. Maybe I shouldn't have complained about the size. And it was cold and greasy. Hot grease is tasty. This tasted like rendered lard, as taste-free as John Morrell can make it.

Oh, well, there are the potatoes. There are a million ways to make potatoes, and 999,000 of them are good. The garlic mashed potatoes were cold and unpleasant as well.

Oh, But I Came For The Onion Rings

They don't come in a brick anymore, that you have to tear apart. They come in a paper cone, and they are light and loose and limp. There's no way to grab one end, and stick the other end in the seasoned dipping sauce; it'd be like trying to row a boat with a rope.

Eating them without the sauce is possible, of course. You have to tip your head back like you're a human Pez dispenser, and then drop a handful into your gaping maw. Oh, wow, fun. And without the sauce, the predominant taste is not of onion, not of breading, but of the oil they fried the onion rings in, several weeks earlier. Just a note: if you ever run a restaurant, it's a good idea to change the fry oil every few months. When I was running a fast-food joint decades ago, we filtered the oil every night using a filtering aid, and dumped the oil weekly - and we'd have dumped the oil two or three times a week, except the owner prohibited that.

It's amazing, how many restaurateurs think it's more profitable to sell food that people don't like the taste of.

How Was Your Meal?

I again need to mention that the waitress was excellent. She asked how everything was, and seemed genuinely chagrined when I said it was incredibly disappointing. I'm glad I didn't tell her the truth: that this meal at Damon's was absolutely the very worst meal I'd had in at least a decade. When Jasper was young, we'd go to Showbiz Pizza Place, a Chuck E Cheese wannabe. Jasper loved the games, but the food was pretty much inedible. By way of comparison, Showbiz was a gourmet delight.

She offered to warm up the ribs and potatoes, but I wasn't there for warmed-up leftovers any more than I was there for the cold version I had originally been served. She offered to package up the food, so I could take it with me. I may have been annoyed with the dog when I left, but I wasn't going to be cruel.

I won't tell you the meal made me nauseus; I'm not illiterate. The meal was nauseous; the term to describe me was nauseated. I texted Blondie, told her where the car was parked, and that I wouldn't be using it any more. I was in no condition to drive, and I figured she might have an easier time finding a neighbor to fetch the van in the evening than during the day. She was alarmed by the text message, and my earlier comments about trying to find a pawnshop and check it out, and called the police.

What To Do Next

I sat there and drank another glass of ice water, another glass of Pepsi, trying to settle my stomach. Pepsi was originally a patent medicine, you know; the name comes from the fact that it was touted as an aid for dyspepsia. It wasn't doing the trick, and Nancy Graceless was really getting on my nerves. I decided to go outside and see if the fresh air would help.

Near the entrance, there's a park bench. I sat there. Could I vomit? Did I want to vomit? Was I going to vomit whether I wanted to or not? I just kept getting sicker and sicker. A guy came out, apparently headed for his car, and in passing, asked if I was OK. I told him I wasn't sure; I'd just had the worst meal I'd run across for at least a decade. He said, yeah, there was someone else in there who didn't care for his ribs. I then realized, from the stuff he had with him, that he was probably part of Damon's management.

Did I want to go to the hospital? No, that was silly. Visits to the ER are expensive, and I've just had some bad food; it's not like I'm sick or injured. Did I want to get a taxi to go home? No, I was still POed at Blondie, and the way I was feeling, I didn't want to talk to her; it might cost me my marriage. The fresh air wasn't helping much, but it seemed to be helping a little. I thought more about vomiting. It sounded more and more appealing. I was trying to decide if there was a drug store at Park City, so I could buy some syrup of ipecac.

Then The Police Arrived

He was built like a football lineman. He came up to me and asked me if I was OK. I said yeah. He asked me what I was doing. I said, well, from the appearances of things, sitting. He didn't like that answer, and shortly after he appeared, a half-dozen others started standing around, watching. I told him that Martha Stewart went to prison, not because she did anything else wrong, but because the cops claimed she lied to them, so I'd rather remain silent. He asked me my name. I was slow to answer. Under the common law, you're allowed to change your name at any time, without requesting permission of the courts, as long as it's not for an illegal purpose such as fraud or evading prosecution. On the other hand, if I said "Puddin' Tain", I suspect I would have been tasting blood. He asked me if I had any identification. I said yes, but not in my wallet pocket. I didn't say anything about what might be in my coat pocket.

He started calling me by my wife's surname. I didn't correct him. He asked me if I had made any threats against myself or others. I half-laughed. Is telling someone that I was sick from a meal I'd eaten a threat? Isn't that an anti-threat? No, I said. He asked me if I had any weapons on me. I thought about Oscar Wilde passing through customs, being asked if he had anything to declare. Wilde said "Only my genius". What is a weapon, anyhow? I'd given that one a lot of thought lately, as indicated before. I tried to think of what I had in my possession. Is there anything that could be considered a weapon? No nail clippers. Would a ball-point pen be considered a weapon? He didn't like my thoughfulness and attention to detail, and jerked me to my feet by my shirt and coat, and slammed me against the brick wall next to me.

Ooof!

I hit the wall hard enough that it knocked the air out of me, and my jeans fell to my knees. No, I wasn't going commando, thank goodness. He felt me up, in all the places that might seem reasonable, reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my camera, shoved it back in, grabbed me in the crotch, and squeezed not so gently on my nuts. He finally stopped leaning on me, and I was able to lift my foot up so that I was resting the sole instead of my ankle.

My God, I thought, he doesn't just have a Brian Dennehy build, but he thinks of Dennehy as a role model. But it's fairly safe for him, beating up on a gimp instead of going up against Rambo. I tried to suppress the tears, but I don't claim to be all that macho.

But as Janis Joplin pointed out, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. There's something wonderful about a cop beating up on a gimp. The cop gets to feel like he's a big man, and the gimp feels like he's free. I congratulated him on beating up a tired old cripple, told him he oughta be proud. If I beat you up, he said, you'll know it. Oh, wow, I said. You're sure I'll be conscious? Sometimes, he said, it's necessary. Sure, I thought. Come morning, nothing like a strong cup of coffee, a couple of donuts, and a few pummelings to get you going.

You Want Me To Run You In?

He shoved me back onto the bench. For a second time, he said, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. What you going to arrest me for, I said, nausea? You're disturbing the peace, he responded, waving his arm to indicate his posse. Until you started fondling me, I said, nobody was disturbed. He then indicated that the owners of the property didn't want anyone sitting there, and I had to leave. Amazing, I thought to myself, that they would go to the expense of putting a bench there that nobody was supposed to be sitting on.

Well, I thought, I could get in the van and drive away, but I wasn't a safe driver before, and I sure as hell don't want to drive now, because he'll charge me with mopery, dopery, and popery. I got up, and started walking towards Damon's entrance. Where do you think you're going, he asked. I said that I was going to hydrate myself, and try to recover from being mugged. I half-expected him to stop me. He didn't have any excuse for that, but he didn't have any excuse for trying to castrate me, either.

I ordered a Pepsi, and an ice water. She brought me something dark and incredibly bitter; perhaps it was a diet cola. I drank the ice water, and tried to recoup some strength. Eventually, I started walking.

But Where To Go

I didn't want to face Blondie. I was really POed now, that she had apparently sent the cops to beat me up. When I was four years old, I was raped by a deputy; she knows that I get stressed out even talking to a uniformed cop. I sent her an incredibly offensive text message; possibly the worst language I've used to a woman in a decade. And I decided to head for the train station. I kept hearing the lyric "one-way ticket on a west-bound train" in my head, and it kept sounding more and more appealing to me.

Sometimes, I walk with a quad-cane walker, and sometimes I walk without it. I don't walk very far in any case. I walked across the parking lot towards Manheim Pike, and I kept wishing I had my cane. My ankles are weak anyhow, and the rough ground didn't help; I kept wobbling, thinking I might fall, and there was a fairly stiff breeze trying to knock me down. A car went past me slowly, tapped on the brakes a couple of times after it went past me, then parked in the bank parking lot, turning off their headlights. Were the cops going to arrest me for walking down a road that didn't have a sidewalk?

But I walked past, and nobody tackled me. I turned right on Manheim Pike, and felt incredibly sorry for myself. I didn't think the ribs were cracked, but they were definitely bruised, and further south, there was much more pain. My knees weren't used to this kind of a workout, and my ankles were cursing me. And the nausea wasn't going away. If I'd been walking past a hospital emergency room, I'd have walked right in and asked for a bed and a morphine drip. I was in serious pain.

After About A Mile

After about a mile - seems like such a piddling little distance, doesn't it? - I got to Lyndon Diner. Well, it'd give me a chance to sit down, and maybe I could do something about the nausea. I sat for a minute and looked at the menu. I'd thought maybe vegetable soup would do the trick, but I didn't see it. I've only ever eaten at Lyndon Diner once before, and I swore I would never return; the food, the service, and the prices were all pretty unsatisfactory. Well, they had chili. Maybe a bowl of chili, if it's not too hot, and I put a lot of crackers in it, and some coffee, and lots of sugar in the coffee to bring up my blood sugar.

And then I saw the note at the bottom of the menu. After 8 PM, there's a $5 minimum. I looked around at all the empty tables and booths, and decided, "Now here is a restaurateur that knows how to deal with a recession," and got up, just as the waiter arrived. I told him that I was damned well not going to pay $5 for a $2 bowl of chili and some coffee, and left. I'd buy a Pepsi from a vending machine further up the road a bit.

Except that there aren't any vending machines along that stretch of road. I still have a hard time believing it. And it's a very inhospitable road for walking. The curbs are impossibly high to step over, so either you walk five times as far by walking to the back of one parking lot, then to the front of the next, etc., or else you walk in the road. I've seen what hitting a 120-pound deer can do to a car. This being Pennsylvania, I assume most other drivers have, too, and I wasn't eager to be hit, but I figured that if they wanted to see what hitting a big old bloke like me can do to their front end, and to their insurance rates, I couldn't stop them.

Where's Roseville Road?

I had traveled three miles when a guy pulled over, and asked my assistance. "Can you tell me where Roseville Road is?" I'm sorry, I said, normally I could tell you, but my brain is exhausted. I could show you, but I don't know that you want to let a big guy like me in the car with you.

He looked me up and down, then looked me in the face, and asked me if I was all right. You're awfully pale, he said, and you're panting awfully hard. Do you need to go to the hospital?

No, I said. I was mugged, and I'm a gimp, and I'm terribly out of shape, but I'll be OK. He was actually looking to get on US 30, and he gave me a ride to within a couple of blocks of the train station, and I was able to tell him how to go out Oregon Pike to US 30. Nice guy. He asked once again, before I got out, if he could take me to the emergency room, but I declined.

You Can't Get There From Here

The train depot was open, but abandoned. I tried to find how much it cost and when a train was leaving that would go to Deshler, Ohio, (turns out that the trains stop in Bryan these days instead of Deshler) but the machines don't have info on trains that go west of Pennsylvania. I checked my cell phone. Several voicemails. The phones in the house were all ringing every 15 seconds, and Caller ID said it was 911 calling. She was mad I had screwed up the phones like that. Her cell was running out of time, so she'd bought more, but you couldn't make or receive calls on the other phone.

I thought about it, and called her, and volunteered to get the phones fixed. She fetched me, and I had no luck with the phones. Screw it, I've been thinking about just going with cell phones to save the cost of Vonage, and I tried to cancel service. Oops. Not at night, you don't. So I went into the control panel and configured it so that when 911 called us, it would also ring the non-emergency numbers of several local police departments. If they can't get the 911 center to stop ringing us, who can?

And then finally, I unplugged the Vonage adaptor a couple of hours later, when the calling hadn't abated.

dal Capo al Coda

I've been gobbling ibuprofen in excessive quantities about 30 hours now. I think my ribs are bruised, and I am very careful how I sit; there's a lot of swelling down there. My ankles are swollen a lot, too, and my feet feel like they're hamburger.

And that premonition about being attacked? It should be gone. Instead, it's stronger than ever.

I keep thinking about Breaking Bad, about the high school chemistry teacher with terminal cancer. He's straight-arrow, but he's started making drugs in order to make enough money to provide for his family - his son is disabled - after he's gone. A big part of the story line is that he's not just making drugs. He's dealing with some really nasty people, and so he's making other stuff, like explosives, to protect and defend himself and his family from them.

A Minor But Not In Digging Ore

I've got a minor in chemistry, and while I know how to do all the things he's doing, there are some things that the scriptwriter isn't saying. It's sort've a "yes, but" situation. Yes, you can do that, but you have this problem and that problem, and it's quite possible to solve those problems, but you don't realize the problems by watching the show, much less learn the answers.

If freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then I could be free from attack if I develop the chemical equivalent of a "dead-man's switch". Take your hands off the handle of the lawnmower, and the engine dies, right? If I had a bomb in my pocket that would go off if someone slugs me, killing the person who slugs me, I could use that bomb as a prophylactic, preventing the attack. That's the same tactic this nation used for decades with nuclear weapons: mutual assured destruction.

The problem is figuring out how to make something that doesn't explode when I don't want it to. That's the sticky part. Oh, and well, there are laws about possessing explosives. They're kinda silly. Take a grocery bag, add a spoonful of flour, shake it so that the flour is greatly dispersed in the air, and it will explode. Most powders are equally explosive, and then there are the things you can make with canning supplies and disinfectants and such, things that actually require a nickel's worth of knowledge.

It Won't Work

I don't think it will work. I'm not afraid to die - the health insurance companies are trying their damnest to hasten that event in any case - but I'm not sure I could convince an attacker that I have a bomb. And it's kinda messy, anyhow. I like hooded sweatshirts, but I'm no Unabomber. If I need a weapon, I think it probably needs to be a roll of quarters - grasp it in your hand, and it's not quite brass knuckles, but it's not bad - or a sock full of marbles, or a baseball bat, or a car.

Even car keys make a nice weapon, if you grasp your key ring so that the key sticks out between your fingers. Jab someone like that, and you can poke a hole in them. Attackers often get distracted from their attack if they develop holes in their body. But running over them with a big sedan is also quite an effective deterrent.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Amtrak - BBQ ribs - Breaking Bad - Brian Dennehy - castration - Columbus - Damon's Grill - Janis Joplin - Lost Cajun Kitchen - Lyndon Diner - Martha Stewart - Nancy Grace - onion rings - Oscar Wilde - Ottawa - Pepsi - police brutality - premonition - Puddin Tain - Rambo - Red Pig - Rudyard Kipling - Showbiz Pizza - syrup of ipecac - Vonage - weapons - World Trade Center