On Thursday morning, after three days of not riding my bike my hip felt a little worse. As usual, once I was up and moving around it eased off but I decided to make an appointment with my doctor to find out if it was serious. I called in the late morning and got an appointment for that afternoon.
I worked on memorizing Serge
Gainsbourg’s song “Frankenstein” and also on writing an alternative English
version that’s faithful to Mary Shelley’s novel.
I had my last chicken drumstick for
lunch and took a siesta before getting ready to go see Doctor Shechtman. I did
a few exercises for my piriformis before riding my bike. On my way out I saw
that the mail had been delivered for the first time in a while because the
front door had been finally fixed so the mail carrier could get in. On top of
the mailbox was an envelope containing a book of poems sent to me by Nick
Cushing and written by a friend of his who wants me to write a review. Inside
the mailbox was my new health card, but I just put it back inside to get later.
The ride didn’t really bother my hip so much as my leg just below it on the
side. On the way up Brock it suddenly occurred to me that I since I was going
to see my doctor I should have grabbed the envelope containing my new health
card. But I still had the paper to use in lieu of the card and I hoped that
would be enough. When I got to the front desk and the receptionist asked for my
card, I pulled out the paper and found that it had been damaged by riding in
the rain. The number that she needed had not been washed out though and so it
was all right.
I worked on a French grammar
exercise while I was waiting and while the receptionist had to deal with
someone shouting and swearing at her over the phone. I hadn’t finished the
exercise before I was called.
Dr. Shechtman had my lie on my back
while he moved my leg around. He said I had good hip rotation and so it
probably was a problem with one of those deep down gluteus muscles like the
piriformis. He dug in deep with his hand until he hit the muscle that was
bothering me and told me it would help if I could get a deep massage from a
physiotherapist. He explained that it would be more uncomfortable after
sleeping. He said that he had the same problem a few years ago when his
daughter was small and he used to get her to walk on his butt while he was
lying on his stomach. He said that at the time she was just the right weight
and size to hit the spot. I imagined that she must have enjoyed that too. He
told me that physiotherapy is free for those over 65 and asked how old I was. I
told him 64 and he asked for my birth date. I told him that it was May 26 and
he said, “Oh so you just have a few days!” I reminded him that it was now after
May 26. He told me his birthday is May 28. I think that he and I are very close
to being the born the same year as well.
I told him when I first started
feeling the discomfort and how it happened on a ride out to Scarborough. He
thought it was very interesting that I’ve ridden my bike on every street and
alley in Toronto from Eglinton down to the lake and from Kipling to Birchmount.
He said that the fact that I was documenting my rides makes for a great
history.
He told me that he didn’t think that
I needed x-rays and that I should do the exercises I’d found at least a couple
of times a day and not do the long rides for a while. He thought short rides
would be okay.
I rode down Bathurst to Queen and
then west. There was a line of cyclists in front of me and I looked back to see
if it was safe to pass. The nearest vehicle was far enough back to see my
signal and so I signalled and started passing. I was halfway along the line
when a vehicle started honking angrily at me, then he pulled to the left and
passed me, shouting out his passenger window that I should learn to drive. I
caught up with him before Straughan. He was thin and wiry man in his thirties
with a baseball cap and a chin beard and looked like an Ontario hillbilly. I
asked him if he’d seen my signal. He shouted, “Fuck your signal! You got one
lane!” which was odd, since I was well within the right lane, while he’d straddled
two lanes to pass me. Maybe he thought there's a bike lane on Queen. I said,
“No we don’t! We have both lanes!” I guess he fell behind in traffic because a
minute later he passed me again, and shouted, “When we pass we look back!”
Frankly he seemed like he might have been drinking.
I stopped at Freshco where I found
that the California cherries are cheaper than the grapes right now, so I bought
four bags. I also bought a whole chicken for under $6 and some Greek yogourt.
My new health card picture seems
more than a little out of focus compared with the old one.
I partially thawed the pack of
“ribs” that I’d gotten from the food bank a couple of weeks ago. It’s certainly
not ribs but some kind of pre-cooked and spiced mystery meat. I baked it in the
oven. It turned out they were ribs after all, but pre-cooked short ribs and not
as tasty as ones I’ve grilled from scratch.
I watched two episodes of Stories of
the Century and this time watched them in chronological rather than
alphabetical order. The first story was the second in the series and it was
about Billie the Kid. These stories would have been much better if they hadn’t
injected into each one the fictionalized railroad detectives, Matt Clark and
Frankie Adams. Frankie is working undercover as a piano player in a saloon when
Billie and his gang come in. Billy wants Frankie to drink with them but she
overhears someone come in to tell Billie about the herd of stolen cattle they
need to move. Billie starts to take Frankie with him but Matt intervenes.
Billy’s men beat him up and they head off with Frankie. Matt sees one of
Billie’s men travelling by buckboard and he sneaks on the back. The wagon is
stopped by Pat Garret, who discovers Matt, and Matt joins his posse. They stop
Billy from moving the cattle and kill some of his men. Billy escapes and goes
to his hideout where he takes Frankie on a buckboard as a hostage. Matt and Pat
chase them and after a fast chase the buckboard crashes. Billy is arrested only
later to escape. Pat later finds Billy in the home of a mutual friend. They
have a showdown and Pat wins.
The real story is that Billy was
born in New York in 1859. The family moved out west and when Billy was 15 his
mother died of TB. After all the outlaw stuff, the most common story of how Billie
died was that Garrett stepped into a dark room where Billie was. Billy drew his
gun and backed away, asking, “Who is it?” in Spanish. Garrett heard Billy’s
voice and fired twice, killing him.
The second story was about Frank and
Jesse James. The story begins when the James Gang are already infamous. Some
bumbling detectives in Missouri throw a bomb into Jesse and Fran’s family
house, killing their mother and ten year old brother. The James boys declare
war on the law. They’ve heard that a detective is travelling by stagecoach in
their area and they stop it to rob it. Fictional railroad detectives Matt Clark
and Frankie Adams are on board. One old man is a southern colonel and so Jesse
says he won’t rob him. He also lets Frankie off but he robs Matt. He questions
all the passengers and when one man says he fought in the war Jesse demands to
know the regiment. When the man names a non-existent regiment Jesse concludes
he’s the detective. The man tries to get away and is killed. Frankie goes
undercover as a post office clerk and intercepts a letter that Jesse sends to
Chadwell Pierce. They open it, which I assume is against the law and then they
go to Kansas City where Frankie works at the post office there. When Pierce
comes for the letter Matt follows him but the detective is detected and beaten
up. Later the James Gang pile lumber on a train track and set fire to it to
stop a certain train. They steal the safe and transport it as part of a freight
wagon train. While searching for Jesse as part of a posse, Matt sees the wagon
train and guesses that Jesse is part of it. The posse attacks and after a
gunfight Jesse has to abandon the safe. Later two brothers named Ford
infiltrate the James gang in order to get the reward. One of them shoots Jesse
in the back.
Jesse was played by Lee Van Cleef.
In the real story the James boys
were hardcore Confederate southerners. Their father had been a Baptist minister
before moving to Missouri. The family owned six slaves. The father died after
going to California to preach to prospectors. The mother remarried and the new
family had seven slaves working a tobacco plantation. The civil war had a
bigger impact on Clay County, the part of Missouri where the James boys lived,
than on the rest of Missouri because slaves made up one quarter of the
population. Robberies by the James-Younger gang were often almost performance
art when there was a crowd present. They would rob people at fairs and joke
around with the crowd at the same time. Some of their crimes were politically
motivated. They would choose banks that they thought were owned by Republicans.
After most of the gang had been killed, Jesse took on new recruits, which
included the Ford brothers, who shot Jesse for the reward. But the Ford
brothers were charged with murder and sentenced to hang, but were acquitted and
received part of the reward. They later became part of a show in which they
re-enacted the assassination.
Jesse James had one surviving son,
Jesse James, who had four daughters. They moved to California and ran a
restaurant called the Jesse James Inn. He died in 1951.
No comments:
Post a Comment