The Floorman Cometh - I meet new back doctor M Barry Lipson - Visit with the Bubecks / Poem: She Calls

"Squash Face" wrote my daughter/law about baby Grace.

Goodbye kitchen floor linoleum. I was tired of looking at this gash in the floor where something dropped from the freezer. To fix it, I'd put White-Out on it which made it even worse. Plus all these unsightly black screech marks. The two rooms where I spend most of my time are Kitchen and Living Room.

Why, I asked myself, am I suddenly fixing up my house? Possibly cuz I had folks over for my 65th b'day party so I saw my house thru other people's eyes.

Also, after I moved in 15 yrs ago, I thought of it as nearly a perfect house, so why change anything? It put a spell on me. It was their house.

My Great White Shelf. From Ikea. I had to remove everything from the shelves for the floor-putter-downers. Luckily my back is doing tolerably well. Also took everything off this ladder which I use as kitchen shelves.

When I painted it, I used, among other things, acrylic fabric paint cuz I could squeeze it directly onto the ladder.

Here's Ron, master floor installer. He and his crew drove 2.5 hours down from their home in Schuylkill Valley, according to Doug at Specialty Floors in Roslyn. I spent NO time talking with the installers cuz I didn't want to waste their time.

The folks at Specialty Floors, however, are great talkers. That's cuz they're sales people. Owner Nick Della Guardia took me in the back room where they have special sales. He showed me reams and reams of flooring and I confessed to him, I can't tell the difference between any of them.

Altho Nick doesn't go on the computer, he spent hours with the guy who designed their website. They looked at competitors' websites and came up with their very own. I agreed w/Nick that it's quite terrific. I was referred to him by my son Dan who had Nick carpet his basement.

Floorman Ron's helpers are his son (the man with the nostril ring on the right) and his friend Goose.

Doug told me Ron learned to lay floors at age 9, taught by his floorman father.

First thing they did was to vacuum the floor since the new floor would be laid on top. The noise was so loud I fled upstairs to my study.

I had a 1:30 appt with M Barry Lipson, orthopedic surgeon, in Newtown, who came highly recommended by my friends Freda and Bernie. I left home with directions to his office and results of my two lumbar MRIs, one from 2008 and one from last November.

Lipson loves explaining what's gone wrong with your back. Lemme tell you something. This is the kind of doctor everyone should have. A teaching doctor. A doctor who wants you to understand your problem. He spends time with you. I was not used to this. Plus, the office was gorgeous, the equivalent of a home away from home.


Will I need surgery was a question I asked him.

No, he said, it's a last resort and it doesn't always work.

Neither does an epidural, which is what he recommended and made the arrangements for me w/his assistant and first mate, his wife Arlene. They're an amazing team and work together w/amazing efficiency in this solo practice. I'll be going to Doylestown Hospital.

Lipson said I had a high threshold for pain when I told him I don't take anything for pain. Nothing works, that's why.

Look at this b'ful green area rug and the lovely green linoleum underneath. I was in heaven.

Driving home I snapped this famous restaurant "Brick Hotel." You dine on the glassed-in front porch. I think it's in Richboro which is contiguous w/Newtown, where the doctor's office is. Despite its name, Newtown is filled with very old houses and buildings but is a lovely upbeat city, worth looking up on Wiki, but of course I won't cuz I'm hurrying thru this cuz I wanna make my evening popcorn.

Thing is, when I eat popcorn and blog, my hands are filled w/olive oil and I get tiny pieces that fall into the computer keys.

The countryside is so b'ful I just snapped away at this little hillside with green pines.



After my appt, I headed toward the home of Phyllis and Bob Bubeck, hoping they would be home. I stop by every year or two when I'm passing by. Am never sure which house it is on N Traymore Avenue in Ivyland but I always stumble on it. Only one lane, tho, cuz of the snow, so when a schoolbus came by, I had to pull into someone's drive.

Phyllis used to run the Warminster chapter of New Directions. Seventy-three today she has the same ebulliance as ever. She was brutalized by her crazy mother. When she was younger, I'm guessing in her 40s, she wanted to convert to Judaism and studied with a rabbi. She identified w/the Jews b/c of all our suffering, and, as you know, everyone with fullfledged Bipolar Disorder knows the meaning of that word.

When it came time to renouncing Christ, she couldn't do it.



Funny, cuz I gave up my belief in God and found it easy to do. I don't miss him at all. I remember we had a newcomer to our Writer's Group and he said he couldn't bear to live in the world if there was no god.

One time before Bob Bubeck retired from Miller's Quarry, he took me and Simon down down down to his quarry, a veritable Grand Canyon, and we picked out Rocks to put in my garden. Said rocks are buried deep under the snow now. Here's a sample of how much snow we got this very week.

My car. Shamefacedly, I admit if I knew how to post my photos on Facebook I would. I guess I wanna be part of the popular crowd.

Birdbath buried.

I have so many fond memories of the Bubecks. I used to visit Bob's brother Frank who owned a farm in Bucks County. I'd visit the old man and he'd load me down with fresh vegetables that were unbelievably delicious. After his death, Bob sold his land.

Today, said Phyllis, three magnificent houses reside there and it's called Bubeck Court. Prices go up to 700K!

When I got home, the floormen were gone, leaving me with a brand-new beautiful floor.

There wasn't a speck of dirt left from them. They turned on my kitchen radio to a station they liked and - get this! - turned it back to XPN where I had it on.



And what are you left with, Dear Reader? All things are temporal. On the jazz station Ella just sang a rousing Mack and Knife. And then...it was over. It reminded me how fleeting life is. One misstep and you're dead. An almond going down the wrong pipe w/no one to Heimlich you back in shape. Too much lithium in your system so you die a slow death by renal failure. Some spoiled hamburger meat with lethal bacteria inside. Let me count the ways.

Ruthie, what's the matter with you?

Lordy, lordy, I just found my poem She Calls about a linoleum contractor. I remember sharing it with my then-shrink Beth Lindsey. A Freudian, she found sexual symbolism in it. You can probly find it everywhere if that's your perspective.

SHE CALLS

At twilight in the whorl of a tree
past Raythorn's sheep farm
a respendent shadow
veined with color
and true as the setting sun
shone like a lamp
He saw it
Hap Brady
linoleum contractor
and angler extraordinaire
saw from his truck
the shape of an unknown woman
pressed to the burning join of tree
He springing from his truck
onto Raythorn's meadow
feeling the fading edge
of the good heroin
he and Maury did that day
sniffing between jobs
to chase away the expectant light of noon
And could only when approaching the
the calling light
drop to his knees
and bury his face
in the threaded beads of light
o Maury you will never believe

"It was not in words
but in music she spoke
rhythms of a flowing river
of leaves drifting
soundless
to the autumn floor."
These were not his words
they came from her
melodies crossing
the land's edge laced with sorrow
and with peace
He wiped with quick motions
the corners of his mustache
for forbidden crumbs
lest she find him ungrateful

Caressing with open hand
his breast
he felt her warm being
rise inside him
a camellia opening
enfolding his emptiness
his barren places
the tender wounds that would not heal
held with pearlsoft petals

I can't think of why you've come
he said looking over Raythorn's darkening fields
I don't pray no more
or think of anyone but me
I haven't a belief in the goodness
of my fellow man
or of myself
I have on occasion
taken
to cheating the people who trust me most
Yet it seems
for the first time
since I found myself
on this endless scrub of plain
where no burrow have I
that maybe I'm more than just
some dumbstruck nobody.