Remembering Luci

As I sat there alone in the Hospital, staring at the WBNS-TV Transmitter Tower, I could not help but think about my childhood star, Luci.

There was a time when the local television stations had time to fill with local shows; the networks -- CBS in this case -- had little to do with the schedule.  Mom turned on the television shortly before 8 AM.  It was a large wooden box with a dim cathode ray tube that was barely capable of black and white.  It took a few minutes for the tubes to warm up and the picture to start squinting on the screen.  It was time for Captain Kangaroo.  It was also time to pull out my toys and begin building today's empire.  I had wooden blocks that came from Lazarus, from which I learned some basics about Geometry, pre-LEGO bricks with building plans, a pre-Thomas the Tank plastic train with track, and Tinkertoys.  This was all I needed to build the various structures of my railroad empire.

For the rest of the morning, somewhere between the morning television and my empire, I passed the hours.  I also learned.  I still have that jingle from the good Captain run through my head from time to time, "All good doggies say thank you too, just like all good people do."

But mostly I wondered what happened to Luci.

I yearned for those days, when at 9 o'clock, Luci's Toyshop came on.  Luci's world was simple, a talking tree who seemed to sleep through most of the show, Pierre Poodle, Stanley Mouse, the Dragon, George Giraffe, the Walrus, Chan 10 - the Chinese Guy, Wonder Witch, Lamb, and Gumby.

Pierre Poodle went through the list of birthdays, Stanley Mouse was a sidekick, the Walrus helped recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the Dragon, though amiable, grew to enormous size when mad, you get the idea. Everyone had a job, everything was predictable.  Some crisis happened, puppets reacted, situation resolved, we all learned something.  Perhaps the most iconic for me was Lamb, who taught the ABC's to everyone in central Ohio.

I was all set to go to Luci's Toyshop on the morning of June 3, 1965. You see, Luci had a live audience, and I, I would be there!  We were in the television studio and ready for the show to begin when CBS interrupted to broadcast the first U.S. Spacewalk.  We would have to return another day...

That day came and went.  Then in August, we were invited to return.  At the time, I could not believe that someone would walk in space the very day I was supposed to see Luci's Toyshop.  I got over it, but when we saw the show in August, it just didn't seem as important.  By September, I was in school, and before long, I didn't think about Luci much anymore.

Now, in the middle of the night in Doctor's North Hospital in January 2001, I desperately wanted to know what happened to Luci.  I wanted my world to be good and right.  Luci made it a safe place.  No one ever got hurt or sick in Luci's Toyshop.  Luci was now nothing more than a fading echo and I felt very alone in the world.

On September 21, 2003, Lucile Ethel Gasaway Van Leeuwen passed away.  God Bless You, Luci.

The Day the Devil Lost His Bet

It was the early morning hours of Saturday, January 6, 2001.  I sat at the end of the hall at Doctor's Hospital and looked out the window.  The immediate effects of anesthesia and morphine had worn off and after sleeping the previous night, exhausted, and spending most of the day in Surgery, unconscious, I really wanted to be awake for a while.  I was living in the moment, but the moment was not the Now, it was a flood of images, memories, and recollections reeling through my head like some mad YouTube video...

I had endured the last three weeks and having spent a night at Doctor's Hospital three weeks ago, I was ready for this night.  I had just discovered the show Stargate playing on late-night TV and I loved it.  Now I looked out the window at WBNS-Channel 10's transmitting tower and like old TV shows transmitted from the past, I recalled my life.  You see, on December 22, I learned three things.

First, I had cancer.  The surgeon had been wrong, and he was perhaps more surprised than I. My surgery was immediately scheduled for January 5th.  I went home and cried like a baby.  That's when my new regular doctor - Jay - called me.

Second, you don't normally receive phone calls directly from a doctor, especially one you had seen only a couple of times.  He wanted to know how I was feeling, and I believed he had also just found out about my cancer.  He hadn't.  I told him.  He responded by telling me to keep lying down, uncurl from the fetal ball I had wadded myself into, put my feet up, and to have Deb call him immediately.  Deb was on her way home.

After a moment together, I told Deb to call my doctor.  She was immediately patched through, and the doctor summoned from the patient he was currently seeing.  Jay wanted to talk to her, and this made me more scared.  Before I knew what had happened, I was on my way to the emergency room.  A test had revealed that earlier in the month I had had a stroke.  The emergency room took me immediately and before I knew it, I was being examined by the ER Physician.

Third, while Jay had instructed me to remain calm and motionless with my feet up, and before Deb got home, the Nursing Home called.  If I wanted to see my mother alive, they told me, I should come now.

Christmas was really sad that year.  Mom lived for Christmas, loved Christmas, and always delighted in seeing the girls unwrap gifts and (secretly) enjoyed preparing a Holiday meal for the family.  We saw her Christmas day.  She now laid there, demented.  We took the girls out in the hall because they were young and we didn't want them to remember Grandma Edith like this.  Deb and I would visit again, by ourselves, for the last time, on New Year's Day.

New Year's Day was just on Monday, and in that week, I had buried Mom and had surgery for cancer.

It was at the funeral for Mom that my cousin Lisa approached me.  In one sentence, in one brief moment of clarity and wisdom, she revealed to me a much larger picture. She said, "You realize you are living the life of Job."

I was living the life of Job.

My health, my mother, and seemingly my future, were now gone.  I still had a house, but I faced the prospect that it would be a house without me.  I visualized the gentlemen from the funeral home removing my body in a black bag while Deb stood crying and holding the girls. My future had turned into a carousel ride, but the ride moved in slow-motion, the music direful, as the ride slowly spun into blackness.

But the Devil had lost his bet.