I once got into a fight with the mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa. I was 17, and it was during a pick-up basketball game 60 years ago. No fighter am I, not really; just a bit of pushing and shoving, with a middle-aged, overweight man.
Afterward, even this brain-half-formed teenager was embarrassed. As I recall, my opponent was short, too. Not that height is destiny, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Napoleon.
I get my pugnacity from my mother. Not that genes are destiny either, thank goodness, as I no longer care much for this aggressive part of my personality.
That’s why I like my Subaru Forester. It has a more humble, laid-back grille to present to the world. Unlike the AI-created version in the first photo. Here is the real McCoy.
Photo by the author
You might not be able to tell the difference. But I can feel it. This vehicle is more comfortable with yellow lights, slowing down, and yielding to the car on the right that arrives at the intersection at the same time.
My car’s great-grandfather, like Pete Seeger, preferred the acoustic Bob Dylan rather than the electric one, which he found brought out his aggression.
It’s hard for me to imagine this fella behind the wheel of my car.
This morning, the thumb and forefinger of my right hand gripped the little turn knob tightly on this lighted lamp and, successfully, as you can see, rotated it to the on position.
For the first time since May 18th, 47 days, when I was in mind and mood, if not in the desert, the scrubland border.
That’s what’s required to turn on this decades-old, creaky light fixture. It’s been my talisman to monitor recovery from the worst viral infection of my eight-decade life that attacked my whole body, head to toe, but especially my hands.
This was my right hand on day 12 of a Coxsackie virus infection, better known as Hand, Foot and Mouth disease.
Photo by the author
I’ve had hundreds of colds, dozens of bouts of flu, as a kid, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and Hepatitis B, shingles in 2000, and COVID five years ago. But nothing quite like this microbe in duration.
Origin
Three days after I picked up this moving van from an outlet in southwest Iowa, I began to feel bumps on the back of my neck.
Photo by the author
I had twice shaken the manager’s hand and used the bathroom at his service station. As I recall, I did not wash my hands, either because there was no soap or my own laziness. This bug lives on surfaces and can also be transmitted through the air by sneezing.
(During the COVID year, I was often sloppy with my mask, letting it slip below my nose. And, of course, the sloppy handwashing. Inevitably, that pathogen eventually struck, in Romania. I tell that story here.
Over the past month and a half, during this ordeal, I’ve never washed my hands more often, including this morning.)
From the back of my neck, the rash quickly spread down my arms.
Photo by the author
And then into the palms of my hands, something rare, which is why my doctor diagnosed Hand, Foot and Mouth. And then down my legs to the top of my feet. Not, thank goodness, into my mouth.
Photo by the author
My Body’s Defenses
About a week into this assault, I felt my body had become a battlefield. Red splotches appeared everywhere. Some turned into blisters. My hands began to swell, and my fingers lost their strength and dexterity.
Which also meant, well, remember the U-Haul. I had picked it up because we were moving some of Rebecca’s furniture from her home, five hours away, which she had sold, to our other home in Decorah, where we’ve lived together for many years. Our plan was for me to return and help with the move.
That was now impossible, as I was infectious and sick. Fortunately, the house’s closing date allowed enough time for my illness to run its course until it was safe for her to return. But I had lived in her home and community for fifteen years, and we had looked forward to closing this chapter together.
But pathogens don’t care about any of that. Nor, fortunately, did my body’s immune system, which mounted one defense after another, starting with mast cells that release histamine, which increases blood flow to the infected areas to help battle the disease. I’m guessing that when this army arrived at my hands, it found a dug-in opponent. In the many battles fought on this terrain, reinforcements were necessary, thus causing the swelling.
About halfway through this hardship, my doctor ordered a blood test to monitor what was going on. Coxsackie usually fades away after about a week, and that was not happening. The test showed a very high level of eosinophils, cells that fight infections. This persistence was my body’s way of saying the job was not yet done.
Especially at night, every part of me felt inflamed, a sort of low-level itch, all over but especially in my hands. For example, if I ran hot water over them — this was central command of the invading army — I felt a warmth that was quite sensual. Very strange. Unfortunately, this made sleeping very difficult, as I would move from a chair to a couch and then, finally, to my bed.
I kept reminding myself that my body was on high alert and each symptom — the redness and inflammation, the blisters, the swelling, the tiredness, the restlessness — was my body at war.
My hands
Two days ago, a blood test showed my eosinophil level was normal, indicating my immune system has returned to a peacetime state. I’m sleeping through the night, and Rebecca is back in our Decorah home. My energy level has returned to the normal baseline for my 77 years. Both hands have a bit of neuropathy that seems to be less every day. I’ll continue to employ the lamp switch test, but I’m hopeful it will no longer be necessary in a week or so.
And, yes, I now wash them almost as many times a day as I should.
No one recommends four donuts a day. Worse, the American Heart Association says Americans consume too much sugar.
Do you doubt me?
Look inside this average American Refrigerator. What do you see?
Photo by the author
It’s full of fruits and vegetables, including just-prepared butternut squash. The owners are so ashamed of us that they hide us away in a lower compartment and only pull us out for special occasions. Carbohydrates made this country what it is, and now we are being pushed aside. The newcomers are taking over.
My spies have told me that just in the last week, this family has eaten spinach, beets, potatoes (sweet for her and Yukon Gold for him), broccoli, brussels sprouts, onions, tomatoes, corn, and black and white beans.
And the only pastry was a croissant, the namby-pamby French, so it doesn’t count.
It’s not only that.
They flaunt their pro-vegetable agenda.
Photo by the author of his son, Ben’s garden
And they’re not alone. I’ve heard there’s talk of a second Community Garden. The old world has been upended. And don’t get me started on the twice-a-week Farmer’s Market and the Co-Op that buys local.
It’s all a Communist plot.
Photo by the author of Decorah’s community garden
And, mind you, it’s not just the stolen 2020 election, phony mail-in-ballot voting, and the enemy press. The conspiracy is bigger than that.
The whole system is rigged against my kind, the real American food. It really is SDS, Sugar Derangement Syndrome.
I’m sick and tired of this, and I’m not going to take it anymore.
It’s the donut, not the legume, that will make America Great Again!
Coming Very Soon: A Dunkin’ Donut Franchise in the White House, next to the Oval Office, with seating in the newly paved Rose Garden. And the arch you’ve heard about, well, I’ve decided there will now be two, both Golden.
My mom read newspapers and magazines, never books. When I cleaned out my late brother Peter’s Florida house a few months ago, I saw very few tomes, mostly about his profession: managing cities. The same was true for my youngest brother, Pat, who also died this past year, a successful sales manager.
My engineer dad read books, especially in retirement, which was cut short by sinus cancer just as he was developing a line of bakery products which he would sell at local farmers’ markets. He had piles of bread baking volumes. And he loved big idea books like Kenneth Clark’s Civilization. Funny, though, he didn’t read novels.
The first “real” book I read was Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman in 1959, when I was ten. My Catholic Grade School, Sacred Heart, belonged to a paperback book club. I remember looking forward to the days when our teacher would distribute the books we had ordered. I was attracted to adventure, sports, and the Hardy Boys mysteries.Still, today, there’s always a detective story on my nightstand.
Around this same time, my school adopted the SRA reading program. Do you remember a box like this in a classroom?
During a reading period, students would select color-coded short stories and progress up a reading ladder by answering questions. The only particular I recall is my green ceiling, two or three colors below Ann Kruse and John Roach, the class geniuses.
That solid, but not excellent, academic identity has stuck with me through fifty years of higher education on both sides of the teacher’s podium.
In my mind, I was never a natural scholastic fit, like the Ann Kruses of the world, always the guy who could stick in the scholarly Major Leagues if he worked harder than anyone else.
Instead of taking a million ground balls at third base, somehow, unbeknownst to my conscious mind, I figured out that reading would be my ticket to success on the intellectual infield.
Eight years after retirement, I’m still at it. Next January, I’m going to teach a Life Long Learning seminar on Bob Dylan in San Miguel, Mexico, where Rebecca and I spend a winter month. While I’ve been to a bunch of Dylan concerts, I don’t really know very much about him or his music.
My son, Ben, reintroduced me to Bob when he was 14 and I was 50, and we’ve attended seven concerts together. In case you’re wondering, more than 2,000 books have been written about the guy who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. I’ve got a little catching up to do.
That’s why I’m out on the practice diamond each morning before other players show up, taking extra fielding, hoping I can keep this ruse up for another year.
Because, you see, there’s always an Ann Kruse trying to take my job!
Photo of Rebecca and me on June 12, 2025, by our Cowabunga Safari leader Brian Hesse
So much of life is mental, isn’t it? A cliche, I know. But some bit of wisdom endures across time, space, and cultures because it’s true, for all.
The last two weeks, I’ve been tethered to a device that is cleaning out and helping to heal a leg wound, now free of Basal cell skin cancer. My surgeon made an incision of 2 centimeters by 3 centimeters behind the right shin, just above the heel. I’ve written about this challenge here.
A few days ago, I met a friend on a walking path close to my home. She asked me about the tube hanging down my right leg below my shorts. I repeated my story and added, “For the first time in my life, I feel old.”
Now, I’m 77, decades beyond spring chicken status. And I’ve helped bury my two younger brothers this past year. By any reasonable measure, Old is what I YAM, with or without the spinach and the medicinal crutch.
Yet this temporary tubing has inflicted a Scarlet “I” on my identity, flashing “Invalid” not only to the world but to my psyche.
Yesterday, at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, with a light rain shower, I, brace yourself, parked in one of the four clearly marked handicapped slots, rehearsing in my mind if necessary, “You see, officer, I can’t allow my right leg to get wet. I know, I should get a disability permit.”
Truth be told, if this lazy sod had spent two minutes putting on the rain sleeve cover he had picked up under a sunny sky at the same location the day before, he could have parked at one of the legal spaces across the street.
But, he kind of likes how he can work the I to his advantage, as in, “Rebecca, could we each mow half the yard this week?”
Until Rebecca said during dinner last night, firmly and kindly,
We don’t want this to become the new normal, do we, Paul?
The ‘this,’ of course, is my too easily accepted visa into the land of the frail. “That just won’t do,” she offered, “until it’s necessary. And you’re not there yet, not by a long shot. After all, a year ago, we were on Safari in Namibia.”
Bingo.
That’s why my recent health challenges, nothing unusual for a septuagenarian, have knocked me off what you might call my year-long Namibian high. You can read about our 14-day Namibian adventure here.
For this story, what I mean by Namibian high is the confidence both Rebecca, who is 74, and I got from doing something neither of us thought we could, at our age.
That’s why the photo of us under the Weaver Condominium is my favorite picture. It was taken on Safari Day 12, and it’s almost as if we are walking on air.
Every fiber of our being is more confident than when we boarded our plane in St. Louis for eight hours to Germany and eleven hours to Windhoek, Namibia. It’s like someone wound us up and let us go. If you look closely, you can see the energy key covered by our red Superman and Superwoman capes.
So, mind over matter can work, and will again, until our corporeal bodies give out. The trick is not to give in before it becomes necessary.
Rodrigo S-C reminds us that the Men’s Soccer World Cup begins tomorrow and interrogates our interest in it. On an upward scale of 1–10, mine registers 11. However, it’s not that simple.
If Donald Trump did not have his small hands over everything happening in this beautiful country and world, my engagement would be 15.
Sadly, and I mean very, very sadly, if there is one institution more corrupt than the Trump Family mafia running my country, it is the Gianni Infantino-led Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). If you want proof, here is Infantino awarding Trump the first FIFA Peace Prize last December. Truly, it could have been a Saturday Live skit. If it weren’t so pitiful, it would be funny.
What dilutes the stench left by the dirty hands of the elites currently running my country and the Men’s World Soccer Organization is that this year’s version is hosted by three countries: Mexico, Canada, and the USA.
So, for the first time in my life, I have a ticket for one of the 104 matches. How many quadrennial events does a 77-year-old man have left? My game, a quarter-final match, will be played on July 11 at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the American football team, the Kansas City Chiefs.
Sorry, faithful Medium readers. I don’t usually begin my stories with a rant. It’s unseemly and self-indulgent, so I’ll now get to the point of why I’ve grown to love what Brazilian star Pelé called “the most beautiful game,” a game that, on the pitch, between the goals, can’t be debased by the frailties of the humans currently running our institutions.
Soccer and Me
It was the fall of 1966, my senior year of high school. In our first gym class, Mr. Kemp brought this funny colored ball into the gymnasium. He told us he had spent the summer in England learning a new game, soccer. What I didn’t know at the time was that that summer, the English men’s team had also won the World Cup, its only first-place finish to date.
Coach Kemp taught us the rudimentary rules of the game, and for a few classes, we kicked the ball around.
That was my only exposure to soccer until my family and I spent a year in England in 1999. By that time, the popularity of soccer had been spreading across America for two decades. Two of my nieces played the game in college. My son Ben had played on youth soccer teams. But I didn’t really understand the game until I started watching it on TV in England.
I grew to love the buildup to a shot on goal by athletes, many of whom were no bigger than my 5-foot-7 frame. The overhead camera angles captured the ballet-like synchronized movement of the 11-member teams as they reacted to one another. And it seemed that the nature of the game, with so little scoring, favored the underdog team, which fit into my anti-bully worldview and, perhaps, justifies my bit of petulance toward the strong-arming of Trump and Infantino.
The 1999 Women’s World Cup, hosted and won by the United States, was my first international soccer experience on TV. In addition to the games, I loved the idea of national teams competing against each other without casualties.
For the last quarter-century, my TV sports viewing has been confined to the international men’s and women’s football competitions every four years. I grew up playing and watching American baseball and basketball.
I still love those games and how each has internationalized as well. But I don’t watch the games, except for my home state of Iowa’s most famous athlete, Caitlin Clark, and her Indiana Fever professional team.
Mostly, it’s soccer, soccer, and more soccer.
Donald Trump corrupts everything he touches, but not this most beautiful game. Like the Papacy and its current occupant, some earthly things are beyond his grubby claws.
Photo by the author in 2025 of the first sighting of a Namibian elephant
The Problem
My bodily fortress has been breached by two invading armies. The first was a cancer that Trojan-horsed itself in the guise of a sore. It lay low for five years, fortunately confined to the gatehouse. The second, a skin rash virus, weakened the walls and battlements. Together, they lay siege for a month, with their generals picnicking at midday on a hill to strategize their complementary assaults, which made daily routines impossible.
This besieged 77-year-old man didn’t cry. Instead, he bellowed into the abyss. And then created a metaphorical story of occupying forces that keeps him at the center of the universe.
Eventually, ever so slowly, he accepted what life (which is only unfolding in an agonizingly impersonal way) threw at him.
The biggest hurdle to this acceptance is confronting the real enemy, the internal Whiner, with The Grown Up. This is best done in the early morning hours with a well-lit mirror, so a conversation can take place. It’s a two-character one-act play. Paul inhabited both parts, tethered to a wound vac that follows him everywhere.
Photo by the author
The Confrontation
This is an edited version of their back-and-forth.
“Dammit,” The Whiner says, “these things only happen to other people, not to me, you see, there must be some kind of mistake. I’ve been such a good little boy, my mother’s favorite. All I’ve been able to do for weeks is sit on our front and back porches. I can’t do any of my favorite things. I’m bored.
I’ll turn over a new leaf, I promise. What if I started going to mass again? And confessing my sins. It’s been a long time. Maybe you’ve forgotten me. Or, worse, you’re punishing me, like Job. Why me, Lord?”
“I’ll leave theology to others,” replied The Grown Up. “But let’s linger for a moment with the Job comparison. You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself, your specialness. Do you know anyone else your age who doesn’t have a chronic condition, something that limits their life?”
” Age is playing havoc with everyone I know, I guess,” offered Crybaby, “but…
“But what?” asked Mature Man.
“This is new to me. I’ve aged so well. Now, it seems I’m like everyone else. What am I supposed to do?”
“The good news is that by living to 77, you’ve proven your resilience. Life is never easy, so you’ve likely got internal resources you can call upon. For example, when was the last time you experienced awe?”
“Funny enough, a Facebook photo of my first sighting of an elephant popped up today from our safari to Namibia a year ago this week. My awemeter went through the roof when our group was waiting at a waterhole.”
“Had you never seen an elephant before?”
“ Yes, many times, in a zoo. But this was new to me, and it was in their natural habitat.”
“So, Paul, how do we bring some awe to your front and back porches until you can get back to hiking, biking, and golfing?
I’ve got an idea. Commit to finding something new each time you sit. New, awesome, can be found anywhere, even from the confinement of a veranda chair. The only limitation is your imagination. Bring me back one photo of a joyful moment from your porch perches.
Porch Revelations
Photo of a tree branch at midday on June 9, 2026
When I first spotted this phenomenon yesterday, after a rainfall, I thought, “What is the white plank doing on that Maple Tree branch in our front yard?” It looked so much like a painted white piece of lumber.
So I put the machine that drains and heals the MOHS procedure that cut out the small section in my leg that contained the basal cell skin carcinoma, and walked around the tree to get a different perspective.
Photo by the author
It turns out to be a combination of moisture, the angle of the sun, and the branch’s geometry that produces an optical illusion.
Awesome.
After lunch, I moved to the back porch to oversee the squirrel playground. Often, it’s hide-and-seek, appropriate for our grandchildren, ho hum.
Photo by the author
But today, as it unfolded before me, it became X-rated.
Photo by the author
I did not turn away because I had never seen this version before. They seemed almost tender with each other. Playful.
Wondrous.
Now, the question becomes, as I settle into my theater seats again tomorrow, what elephant will I discover?
Yesterday, a few minutes before the sun arrived, I scurried out the front porch door of the cream colored house across the street from the children’s playground in the photo.
My burst of energy surprised me, as I had been homebound with an infectious skin rash for almost three weeks. Before the Hand, Mouth, and Foot virus invaded my person, I was a healthy 77-year-old senior who golfed, hiked, mowed, and managed our household compost and recycling bins.
The latter required a regular three-mile jaunt behind the wheel of my eco-friendly 2018 Subaru Forester during which I listened to one of Bob Dylan’s forty albums.
If I were Bob’s 84, would I have survived this assault?
After the ceasefire, on the terms set by the conqueror, my body began the long road to recovery which, in plain terms, meant sitting on the front porch on warm, sunny days watching the world go by.
At first, I only had the strength to observe. My books and writing instruments sat useless next to the anti-viral horse pills I could not grasp or lift.
Then, much to my surprise, one day a thought intruded on my passivity. At first, I ignored it, too panic-stricken to take it seriously. But once my guard was breached, other traitorous morale-busting troops poured through with this ominous message.
Someday, in the not-too-distant future, the everyday sun-infused energy and the collective boisterous power of a gaggle of children playing a short distance away will not be enough to reanimate this old man.
Photo of The Confederate Railroad from Wikimedia Commons
Dear Reader,
Below this note is a letter I sent to my community’s two local newspapers about a current controversy. This introduction is intended to provide context, including what I chose not to say for brevity and civility.
I live in Decorah in northeast Iowa. It is a blue city in a red county and State. Decorah voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump 65% to 35%, but Winneshiek County reversed that tally. This contrast is a perfect example of urban vs. rural and educated vs. the less educated regarding voting patterns in the USA.
I will also add that the Decorah City Council decided a few years ago to fly the Pride Flag on special occasions, which also elicited community-wide back-and-forth.
When the Winneshiek County Fair Board decided a month ago to bring the country-western group The Confederate Railroad to the July fair, I asked myself what contribution, if any, I could make to the public conversation. Those opposed had weighed in with one or another version of ‘anything with the Confederate name or image is a symbol of hatred.’
Those in favor countered with ‘it’s about love of the South, the region, and not about something that happened 150 years ago.’
Honestly, there is truth in both perspectives. Though I was unfamiliar with this group’s music, I went to their website linked above and started listening. I also wanted to know how they explained themselves and their choice of this name.
I came away from this liking many of their songs and them as well. In 2019, the group’s appearance at an Illinois County fair was canceled by a Democratic governor, JB Pritzker. It was interesting to read how they handled that situation.
One element of The Confederate Railroad’s music I liked a lot was the empathy they demonstrated for the southern ‘good ol boy.’ As far as I could tell, there was no racism in those songs, only a heartfelt perspective on the side of young southern males.
As I thought about what I might write, I began to play around with the idea that different groups in my country experience pain for one reason or another. It’s sometimes difficult to empathize with all of them as America’s politics often pits one against the other.
That forces you and me to choose.
Which I did in this letter.
Who Feels Safe?
I’m a 77-year-old white man born two years after Jackie Robinson integrated American baseball, 82 years after Appomattox, and the defeat of the Confederacy. The Confederate Flag that flies on private property several blocks from my home bellows 11 stars, each representing a slave state.
It could stand for love of grits and the southern way of life. After all, that’s why my brother Peter left for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida 50 years ago and never came back.
However, no one fights a war that killed 700,000 Americans for heritage. It was fought for specific material interests and ideological differences, including who is and who is not a man and a citizen.
Otherwise, separate drinking fountains, schools, and anti-miscegenation laws imposed on Black citizens as soon as Federal troops were withdrawn from the South make no sense. And nothing that lasts 80 years is without sense. Nor would these practices have changed without coercion by the Federal government.
And now, in our little neck of the woods, the Winnishiek County Fair Board chooses to bring in a band with Confederate Flag symbolism in its name and image, years after Walmart stopped selling, NASCAR race tracks banned, and southern states removed the Confederate slavery states’ flag from their capital buildings.
Yesterday, after a hike around Palisades Park, I decided to finish up around the fairgrounds. As I headed past the skateboard park, I had this urge only another man my age could understand. I looked around and ducked behind a large tree, confident that, if necessary, I could explain my predicament.
As I stood there, I thought to myself. What would I have done if I were a Black man?
I stole the title from my partner, Rebecca, who frequently loses her phone. As Bob Dylan, someone even older than me, says, it’s OK to pilfer material if you make it your own. Whatever that means, but hey, cut him some slack, he’s 84.
Rebecca’s 74, and I’m 76. Occasionally, we feel our ages, our precise chronology. Not the pretend timeline we both hide behind because of favorable genes, and, at least for my sweetheart, jeans.
We could each pass for 65. That’s a sad sentence, isn’t it? It’s so easy to talk ourselves into the advantages of elderhood, the wisdom hard won, the experience hard earned, and the freedom hard fought, which results in the exaltation to care less about what the world thinks of us.
Sorry, I’ve momentarily lost my train of thought. Why is that U-Haul photo there?
This lapse happens to everyone, doesn’t it?
But, of course, dear imaginary reader, you’ll forgive me. Like I forgave Bob. I see the patronizing gaze in your eyes. It’s the look I naturally gave my mother, who, at 90, told me she had to get home to take care of her father, who had died in 1944.
“I’m projecting,” you think.
You’re probably right, as it seems transferring my unconscious thoughts to you is hard-wired. You really don’t see me as a doddering old fool. Needless to say, if you’re of my dotage, your natural empathy for me might be inhibited because of what it might say about you.
I’m getting tired of thinking about this, so I’ll get back to the U-Haul in the first photo and the filched title. When I parked the truck in our driveway, I had driven 323 miles from southwest to northeast Iowa. We are downsizing from two homes to one. More about that in another story.
After I unloaded the cargo, with help from two Luther College wrestlers who run a moving service, I drove the moving van to the local U-Haul outlet.
The next day, as I prepared for my 10,000-step daily hike, I could not find my sunglasses. The case with the specs was nowhere to be found.
Photo by the author
Unless, I thought, I had left them on the seat of the truck. I remember thinking about putting them on the day before as I was driving the six hours from one home to another. Fortunately, my lorry was waiting for me in the parking lot to search and seize, if only I could find.
I knew it was mine among the five identical fleet marked 15-footers because I found the half-eaten cheese sandwich Rebecca had prepared that somehow had migrated to the well area behind the driver’s seat. However, no sunglasses.
Photo by the author
When I came back a third time, yesterday, the owner gave me that look. He tried not to. But it was there.
So I hoisted myself up yet again into the cabin you see in the first photo. It has to be here. As I crawled into the driver’s seat on my knees, my eyes caught sight of the triangular prism of the case wedged into the area you see below.
I knew it!
Photo by the author
As I slowly edged my butt out, making sure to find the drop step to the ground, I turned around and waved the prize to the owner, who, with a smile, said
