Notes from The Shrine 2: Like It or Lump It

Late May or early June 2024

Transport van
cracked tooth
no one wants to climb
those poles no more

Bob was talking today.  We were at the lunch table and I was telling my dad about getting a dentist appointment set up for him.

“What’d you say about a weapon?” asked Bob.  

I wasn’t sure what he might have heard so I said my dad and I were talking about teeth.  Then I was telling dad about taking mom back to the dealer so she could pick up her car once it had been serviced.  New brakes.  I guess it really doesn’t take that long.

Bob mused on driving, which he said he hadn’t been doing “for about a year now.”  I asked him what kind of car he had.  Or maybe, I wondered aloud, did he have a truck.  He laughed at that idea.

“No,” he said, he never had a truck.  “But who knows once the kids get their foot in there.”

“You never had a truck as part of your job?” I asked.  “Getting up on those poles?”

“That job,” he answered, “was a real pain in the ass.”

Bob was a lineman.  He worked for what then was called Union Electric.  He has spoken fondly about his job in prior conversations so I took this expression of displeasure as a reference to one specific job, some beef or failure or disappointment he must have had out in the field one week.

He talked about a boss, and then about a customer who was paying the bill, whose line it was.  Who was gonna do the work?  Why hadn’t he been told by the customer if his guys had been doing unsatisfactory work?  

“But,” he says, “he didn’t have any trouble getting up on those poles.  And by him, I mean me.”

It had been a little while since I had heard Bob talk much, maybe a few weeks.  Bob was quite vocal when my dad moved in here, back in February. He is quiet more often now, which is a shame because I like hearing just about anything he has to say, including the stories from his lineman days. I’m grateful to hear him revisit a memory, even if it remains unresolved.

My dad and I went outside after lunch.  To the place he started calling Porcupine Hill.  Why he calls it that I don’t know.  Some questions you just stop asking.

The Shrine is actually quite a large property.  It’s more than just a retirement community. It’s owned by some part of the Catholic Church. There is a large main building on the other side of the property that used to have a decent restaurant. My family went to the Shrine’s Sunday buffet many, many times.

Porcupine Hill sits just outside the entrance to St. Francis, i.e. the assisted living wing of the retirement home.  The folks in assisted living are not quite independent anymore; they need some help here and there but they can get around alright with walkers or on scooters.  

The view from St. Francis looks west, toward Missouri, toward St. Louis.  When the trees are not in leaf, you can see the Arch from here.  But by now everything is green.  Down the hill, over the railroad tracks, and on the other side of Route 157 is some sort of wooden pallet factory.  They’re always busy down there moving stuff around or setting piles of wood waste on fire.  

Today we hear those same machine tread sounds as we did the last time we were out here.  It’s a backhoe moving around, or some sort of crane or loader rumbling back and forth, one tread after another, wheels for legs unfolding ad infinitum.  Where do they come from, from before, the beginning of the circle?

My dad has fallen asleep and might need a change.  His pants look wet but he says he’s fine so I’m fine, I won’t insist.  The CNA with bright eyes, glasses, a soft face, and braids said he’s been talking about going outside ever since he got up this morning.  Outside, she said he was saying, outside, outside.  (Her name was Taylor and she was good.)

So we are outside. Mouse Lady and Julian (a woman and her husband, not their real names) are sitting down out here as well.  There are three tables close to the entrance, another one a little further down the sidewalk.  Mouse Lady is a regular out here.  She is not mousy but she did once insist I close a cracked door because mice might get in.  That’s a story for another day.

It’s an open windows kind of a day.  Perfect.  The perfect day.  Temp and humidity in check.  Just a few small puffy cumulus clouds in the sky.  Cumulus humilis, beach clouds providing respite or sanctuary from the sun.  As do these river birches we are sitting under.  They have a reputation for dropping a lot of twigs and leaves but they do make for a fine shade tree.  Dappled sunlight makes its way through, diffuse.  There’s some UV in this light but not much.  These birch are a natural sunlight filter.  

Looking high up into the sky I see what must be a Mississippi kite, speeding along the rising edge of a thermal…