The Parking Placard (Black n') Blues

or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the ADA, Which Just Turned 35

Thanks to the Underground Bookshelf for awarding this the winner of its Disability Pride contest. It will be featured on their website next month.

It’s an epiphany when you realize for the first time that the white stick-figure on the blue parking sign is you. That's you. Now you can park in that fat sirloin of a spot. Now you are “the disabled.”

For me, this leap to disabilityhood was as every bit as much a mental process as a physical one. And I fought the knowledge, down the line, tooth and nail. I always did, with every new adaptation or assistive device, fight, fight, fight. To some that sounds courageous, but really it’s ridiculous. But I was young, I was always healthy, and I was a guy. I didn't need no stinking hot parking placard: that's for other people. I didn't need nothing. 

I had a thick head. 

So what changed my mind? I can’t remember the moment I decided to pick up a disability parking application. It must have been some watershed event, perhaps my 1,000th fall, the one that rattles your very teeth. Falling itself was no big deal by then, and I might do it a half dozen times in a day (at least that's how it felt). After a while, my body looked like Keith Richards’ after a bender, but cry-cry, I dusted myself off and got back in the game – because you've got to, nobody's going to pay your rent. But maybe that 1,000th time was the one to slosh my brain in its comfy bath of cerebrospinal fluid: Wake up, you green-gray piece of fat!

I used a walker then. An aluminum walker, to go along with the studs of my biker jacket. I would drag the thing to the grocery store for a few items, forgetting half of them by the time I reached the aisles. No browsing, no price-shopping, just throwing things in a shopping bag, and teetering back to the checkout while I fished for cash. Then I dragged my Frankenstein feet out to the parking lot again, cars politely navigating around me   the occasional Einstein would honk, not that I could turn around to see him, not that I could reach around to flick him off.

As my legs exhausted themselves, my steps grew smaller, smaller, until my energy exhausted itself and my limbs locked into jointless boards due to muscle tone. In the middle of the parking lot, I stood stock still, like performance art, like the Tin Woodsman before Dorothy Gale came along. 

The walker had wheels on the front legs so I could push it along instead of lifting and planting it with every step. But once fatigued, I lost the power to hold the walker in place, and the wheels took on a more insidious role, creeping forward slowly. As they gained momentum, I thought, 'No, no, not again.' Unable to lift my feet, my upright posture deteriorated into a letter A, opening wider and wider as the walker rolled away. I couldn’t let go   my hands were locked   so at the fateful moment I'd take a deep breath and bail, thinking: Don't land on the Chef Boyardee!

This happened once on a cold winter's night, after my friend and I attended a wake and, on the way home, stopped for a nightcap. The tavern parking lot was a thin, solid sheet of ice. I straggled back to my car, up a slight incline of drainage built into the black asphalt. Along the way I stopped to rest, talking to my patiently shivering friend while we waited for my legs to unlock.

I detected motion. Yep, I was sliding backward over the ice, in the direction of the drain. I was unable to move or resist; like a Gemini astronaut, I was only along for the ride. At the time I had no idea where I was going: I wasn't even facing where I was headed.

My buddy circled around nervously. “Hey, Fred Astaire, what do I do?”

I was picking up speed. So I had to be honest with the guy. “I got nothing."

Jim dug in behind to brace me, but honestly, in our leather-soled dress shoes, we might as well have been wearing ice skates. At this point he's pushing back simply to save his own hide. But there was nothing he could do; there was nothing anyone could do. We were a runaway train, and I was taking him down with me. Sometimes you're the slowly rolling bowling ball, and sometimes you're the pin. He was the pin.

I could imagine what it was like for someone sitting in the warmth of their car, watching us gliiiide across that parking lot. Floating, gracefully rotating in space. Maybe the Blue Danube Waltz was playing on their radio, while we skated from one side of their windshield, all the way to the other. … Faster and faster… Have you watched curling in the winter Olympics?… On and on and on…

What would become of our intrepid lads?

That’s when I started laughing. When things are out of your control, you do well to laugh. In Chicago when freezing your behinds off we often laugh it off with friends. Because it's better to freeze your heart behinds off together and be laughing, than it is to freeze your behinds off with a straight face. And that's the science behind that.

Also, convulsive laughter is helpful in defeating spasticity. In an instant, we were a giggling heap of metal and man sprawled across the dark ice. In our slick shoes, we'd be stranded on that parking lot a long time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how we ever got up again.

Lucky were the times when there was a friend around and frictionless ice to fall on. More often, it was a sidewalk or a bathroom or a busy street crosswalk, hopefully with one or more gallant onlookers there to drag me out of danger and stuff me into my car. After rebuffing their offers for medical assistance, I would fall asleep on the front seat, sometimes more than an hour, sometimes with the engine running.

Somewhere in there happened magic No. 1000, the one to knock some sense in my noggin, the one to make my noggin scream, “Get the blue placard, already!”

Before then, I clung to a weird, outmoded notion of what independence was. But once I crossed into that thin blue sign, what I found waiting for me was a Technicolor world of fuller independence, of accessible services, jobs, housing, education and protected rights, medicines and tech and yes, even decent curb cutouts and primo parking spaces   a whole societal push to involve everyone, including me, and bring everybody to the decision-making table, even hardheaded fools who happened to fall upon the right decision one day, after he fell absolutely every other place first.

Viva the ADA. Let's get riled up and make sure it lasts another 35 years and another hundred after that.

The Lawyer in His Lair: Lincoln, Springfield, and Honestly Laid-Back Camping

  Take I-55 North from St. Louis and after a while you start seeing a lot of stuff named after a local lawyer. Lincoln is his name, and Springfield, Illinois, was his hometown in the years before he hopped a train to Washington to helm an absolute headache of a job. The State of Illinois dubbed itself the Land of said Lawyer, and Springfield, 90 miles northeast of St. Louis, is its capital. With museums, capitol-related tours, Route 66 hangouts, lake recreation and loads of Lincolnalia everywhere, Springfield is definitely worth a day-visit, weekend or even more. We had both been there before, but now we had only one day and I wanted my gal to at least see the lawyer's house, which still stands proudly and is maintained as a national historic site, and maybe we could fit in the fantastic hologram-powered presidential museum, another must-see.

Did I say we only had a day? We had a short day. This was a rough trip. We've been doing this for almost four years now, and it was bound to happen. We were headed north for the summer, and packing for six months away is difficult on her, plus the rainy weather made things sloppy and stressful -- at one point the right rear tire got buried in the mud -- and the accommodations were difficult when one of the RV campground operators shoehorned us into a soggy, inaccessible spot even though I had reserved an accessible spot weeks in advance. For every all the angels I've met in this bumpy ride called life, there are some devils thrown in too. Just like they'll screw over the elderly, some will prey on the disabled. Simply by not listening and being greedy, Jerry at Southgate RV Campground in Fayetteville, Arkansas, really ****ed us over. Watch out for the Jerrys out there.

Not everything was terrible. We got to see our nephew's Little League game on a beautiful evening in Waco, and in Fayetteville, Arkansas, reunited with friends whom we hadn't seen in 20 years! I hadn't realized it had been that long until we sat and reminisced, and of course like true friends tend to do, we gabbed away like no time had passed at all. Dick was a biker and Itera was a nun. They met and got married a week later, and that was over 50 years ago. Back when we lived across the street from each other, Dick was a Dean at DeVry Institute of Technology and loved using his know-how to come up with accessibility devices for me and my progressive condition: an adaptive, locking door-latch and adaptive wheelchair controller -- both beautifully machined -- as well as an adaptive spoon and a refrigerator door-opener, which you had to see to believe ... but it worked! Itera has the giving heart of a saint and was learning how to do energy work, so she would come over and spend hours working with me, in peaceful sessions that would leave us both blissed out. Today they are as welcoming and generous as ever, and these were more great times together. It's turned out to be one of the real jewels of traveling in our little trailer is actually visiting and spending time with loved ones instead of always saying we're going to, but never doing it. This visit meant a lot to us.

But arriving in Illinois was its own relaxing reward, with its comfortable weather and gentle green farming landscape. We went to call on said lawyer at his home. Dude was not around. I figured it was cool to stretch out in his backyard for a few, and catch some rays. I knew there was a tour going inside the home, and what if they came out the back door and were like, "Hey you, shoo, shoo!" But in my shades I was too cool to think about it, busy basking in the power of Lincoln rays.

The Lincoln Home National Historic Site surrounds the home for two square blocks, and is made up of crisscrossing Eighth and Jackson streets lined with two dozen restored homes and out-structures. The area is closed to traffic, so you can go along on the packed gravel streets or on the plankboard sidewalks, both in good shape for easy wheeling in a power chair at least. In a manual chair ...?

        From a wheelchair-accessibility perspective, you'll have to decide which you will do, streets or sidewalks, because it's one or the other: Apparently there were no curb cut-outs in the Great Emancipator's day, right? If you're on a sidewalk or on a street, the only way to cross over into the other is by going to the end of the block. You'll want to do both levels.

Now the home itself is only partially accessible. The Lincolns lived there for 17 years and they added on a second floor, which is not accessible to wheelchairs. The first floor is accessible to manual chairs only: No power wheelchairs or scooters. I'd seen it already in my other, walking life, and my queen was taking a pass that day. There are workarounds, but it's always a bummer to see or hear the word, "NO." From our experience, National Park Service usually does a good job with accessibility. My accessibility questions were answered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources like so: 

"Most power wheelchairs are unfortunately unable to go inside the Lincoln Home due to their weight and their width. If you have a particularly light (65 pounds or less) and narrower power chair, it may be able to fit. (You can send me the specifications of the chair to check, if you would like.) As many of the structural components of the Lincoln Home are original, including the doorways, this unfortunately affects what devices can be used inside the home. Manual wheelchairs, as long as they can fit inside the Lincoln Home doorways, can go inside the home. We have a measurement device at our visitor center we use to check if a guest's manual wheelchair can fit through the doorways. If their wheelchair cannot fit, we also have manual wheelchairs guests can check out free of charge to use.

"When using a wheelchair on the Lincoln Home tour, the individual using the wheelchair (and another individual in their party, if desired/applicable) will receive their own tour guide for the duration of the tour. The rest of the tour group who are not using wheelchairs will go with another tour guide and enter the home using the steps that lead up to the front door. The party that includes the individual in the wheelchair will enter the house through a different entrance, one which uses a wheelchair lift to lift the individuals to the house's first floor level. (The house is raised and on a slight hill.) The first floor of the home tour will be given, and then the tour guide can offer showing pictures of the second floor with narration, to any individuals who choose not to go upstairs.

"Please just inform the person at the Visitor Center front desk that there is an individual in your group that cannot go up and down stairs, and they will communicate with the appropriate staff to prepare the lift. ...The maximum length, I have been told, that wheelchairs can be to fit is 29.5 inches. ...

"We may be able to make it work with 2 individuals in wheelchairs, but any more than that really cannot fit on one tour due to the size of the rooms and the room partitions. ... If this applies to your party, please let me know and we can discuss potential options."

Tall tales be spoken here: the Railsplitter's porch. (Shhh, I'm creeping in the backyard.)

Jennifer Caldwell of Illinois DNR adds more:

"The courtyard and the main level of the house can be accessed by wheelchair. The wheelchair accessible entrance is through the carriage house, which is at the back of the property near the railroad tracks.  The narrowest of the doors/gates along the path is 32 inches wide.

"There is a lift on the north side of the house for guests unable to use the stairs. It is 32 inches wide by 48 inches deep and can accommodate up to 750 pounds.  The lift provides access to the main floor of the house.  Our staff are happy to help direct guests to the lift and assist with lift operation.

"Due to the varying elevations throughout the home, only the main level is accessible by wheelchair.  This includes the reception/fountain area, mother's bedroom, dining room, Victorian room, living room, kitchen and conservatory hall.  For other areas that are not accessible, we can provide live virtual access to those parts of the tour via iPad. (We will provide the iPad and other necessary equipment for this.)"

Contact her with your questions at jennifer.a.caldwell@illinois.gov or 217-685-9554.

Around the historic site, two of the houses are wheelchair accessible and in the cleverest way (see photos). 

I've never seen anything like them — literally, I could not see these lifts until my wife pointed out that they were there. Covered in matching board-work and swinging gates, I love these lifts.

        The houses have exhibits inside, and by the time we poked around the nooks and crannies, gardens and backyards of the tiny village area, the Butterball turkey timer in my head popped out, meaning, "Museummed out. Find another available brain." It usually takes a couple of hours to reach that point, but it was fun and I was done.

The afternoon was getting late and we walked around town. About five blocks away, we stumbled unto the Illinois State Police Memorial Park, at 722 S. Sixth St. It's on the corner of two reasonably busy streets, but set far enough off to be dignified and peaceful. It included enough human elements to make it quite touching, and when the evening bell started tolling at the nearby Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, I found myself very moved by it all. There is also an Illinois Police Officers Memorial not far away, at 840 S. Spring St., beside the Illinois State Museum.

Another few blocks and we reached Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House (phone 217-782-6776), now a state historic site, at 301 E. Lawrence Ave. Built in 1904, it was interesting seeing a museum-piece home -- oooh, it's Frank Lloyd Wright -- set within a neighborhood that's historic but a little worse for wear. I wheeled around the thing is much as I could, even around the back, to see all the different angles it presents. Unfortunately we were there after hours. From the website, the interiors look amazing although completely inaccessible. No response to my inquiry, so I'm guessing my conclusion is right.

Four blocks away, we came to the Illinois State Capitol building, at 401 S. Second St. At 361 feet, the Illinois State Capitol is the taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Its central dome and towers are finished with a layer of zinc that provide its trademark silvery sheen which does not weather. On dreary, bad-weather days the dome looks heavy and leaden, or ironclad and oppressive -- which probably lies in the eye of the beholder depending on what the legislature inside has been up to lately, eh? But it was a bright, sunny day, which squares up with what I've seen coming out of there lately, and those towers were gleaming. Check out the features of the accessible tour here. A couple blocks away a Pride concert was blasting loud. It was a groovy, gorgeous day and folks were out enjoying it.

Camp A While, 1779 1250th Ave, Lincoln, IL 62656. 217-732-8840.

Thirty-five miles northeast of Springfield along I-55 lies a fantastic overnight spot, and it's the owners that make it so. It's a tiny place, maybe a dozen sites in all, very clean, quiet and well-maintained, ringed by trees and farmers' fields. It's a quarter-mile off the expressway, and with a historic pedigree as a traditional stopover spot along old Route 66 just a third of a mile away. Camp A While has been around for decades and was listed in all the old guidebooks. Full hookups, back-in spots of shallow gravel. The owners are hands-on and customer-service-oriented. You call them 15 minutes before arriving -- they insist on it in order to manage the available space, but it's well worth the call because they back you into the spot and see that you are set up with everything you need.

They are completely attentive to accessibility. After hearing my questions on the phone, they arranged a spot with a concrete pad where we could drop the wheelchair ramp, and checked that the gravel was OK with us beforehand. Sites are mostly level, with 15 feet of grass between them, fine for the wheelchair to get around, and there's always many empty spaces around so that the overall atmosphere is relaxed and quiet, never even close to crammed feeling. They get a lot of overnights to and from Florida, and workers. Last but not least, Wrigley, the camp dog, comes around to greet you, and if he likes you, maybe share one of his stuffed toys. He's a smooth operator, and he and my Queen are fast friends.

When we unloaded, two hot-air balloons drifted across the farmers field across the road, which kind of captured the cheerful mood after our short-but-sweet day. One of them had a likeness of the lawyer. While you're there in the town of Lincoln, you can drive through town on Route 66 to see the world's largest covered wagon. Guess who that wagon is driven by? It ain't Wrigley.

The Parking Placard (Black n') Blues

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ADA, Which Just Turned 32

It’s an epiphany when you realize for the first time that the white stick-figure on the blue parking sign is you. That's you. Now you can park in that fat sirloin of a spot. Now you are “the disabled.”

For me, this leap to disabilityhood was as every bit as much a mental process as a physical one. And I fought the knowledge, down the line, tooth and nail. I always did, with every new adaptation or assistive device, fight, fight, fight. To some that sounds courageous, but really it’s ridiculous. But I was young, I was always healthy, and I was a guy. I didn't need no parking placard: that's for other people. I didn't need nothing. 

I had a thick head. 

Something new, something blue.

So what changed my mind? I can’t remember the moment I decided to pick up a disability parking application. It must have been some watershed event, perhaps my 1,000th fall, the one that rattles your very teeth. Falling itself was no big deal, and I might do it a half dozen times in a day. After a while, my body looked like Keith Richards’ after a bender, but cry-cry, I dusted myself off and got back in the game – because you've got to, nobody's going to pay your way. But maybe that 1,000th time was the one to slosh my brain in its comfy bath of cerebrospinal fluid: Wake up, you green-gray piece of fat!

I used a walker then. An aluminum walker, to go along with my biker jacket. I would drag the thing to the grocery store for a few items, forgetting half of them by the time I reached the aisles. No browsing, no price-shopping, I just toppled things into the basket, teetering in the checkout while I fished for money, and dragging my Frankenstein feet out to the parking lot again, cars politely navigating around me - although the occasional Einstein would honk, not that I could turn around to see him, not that I could reach around to flick him off.

Muh sexy ride.

As my legs exhausted themselves, each step became smaller, smaller, until my energy was drained and my limbs locked like jointless boards due to muscle tone. In the middle of the parking lot, I stood stock still, like performance art, like the Tin Woodsman in the days before Dorothy Gale. 

To make things a little easier, the walker had wheels on the front legs so I could shove it along instead of lifting and planting it on every step. But once fatigued, I lost the power to hold the walker in place, and the wheels assumed a more insidious role, creeping forward slowly. As they gained momentum, I thought, No, no, this can't be happening. Unable to lift my feet, my upright posture deteriorated into a wider and wider triangle as the walker rolled further away. As my angle increased, I could hear Carly Simon singing “Anticipation.” I couldn’t let go to break my fall - my hands were locked - so I'd take a deep breath and bail, turning my face as best I could, because I don’t need to be any uglier.

On the way down, I’d think: Don't land on the Chef Boyardee!

This happened once on a frigid winter night, after my friend and I had attended a wake and on the way home, stopped for a nightcap. The parking lot was a thin, solid sheet of ice. I straggled back to my car, up a slight incline of drainage built into the black asphalt. Along the way I had to stop and rest, talking to my patiently shivering friend while we waited for my chilly legs to unlock.

I detected motion. Yep, I was sliding backward over the ice, in the direction of the drain. I was unable to move or resist; like a Gemini astronaut, I was only along for the ride. At the time I had no idea where I was going: I wasn't even facing the direction I was headed.

My buddy circled nervously around me. “Hey, Fred Astaire, what do I do?”

I was picking up speed. So I had to be honest with the guy. “I got nothing."

Jim dug in behind me to brace me, but honestly, in our leather-soled dress shoes, we might as well have been in ice skates. At this point I think he was pushing back simply to save his own hide. But there was nothing he could do; there was nothing anyone could do. We were a runaway train, and I was taking him down with me.

I sometimes imagine what it was like for someone in the warm comfort of their car to watch us gliiiide across that parking lot. Floating, gracefully rotating in space. Maybe the Blue Danube Waltz was playing on their radio, <CUED UP FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE> 

while we skated from one side of their windshield, all the way across to the other side of the windshield. … Faster and faster… Have you watched curling in the winter Olympics?… 

On and on and on… Circling the drain...

What would become of our intrepid boys?

That’s when I started laughing. In uncontrollable circumstances, laughing is often the best thing to do. In Chicago when freezing your body parts off we often laugh it off with our friends. Because it's better to freeze body parts off together and be laughing, then it is to freeze body parts off and not be laughing. And that's the science behind that.

But also, convulsive laughter is useful in defeating spasticity. In an instant, we were a giggling heap of metal and man sprawled on the dark ice. In our slick shoes, we'd be stranded on that parking lot for some time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how we ever got up again.

Lucky were the times when there was a friend around and frictionless ice to fall on. More often, it was a sidewalk or bathroom or busy street crosswalk, hopefully with one or more gallant onlookers there to drag me out of danger and stuff me in my car. After I’d rebuff their offers for medical help, I would fall asleep on the front seat, sometimes for over an hour, sometimes with the engine running.

Somewhere in there happened magic No. 1000, the one to knock some sense in my noggin, the one to make my broken capillaries cry out, “Get the blue placard, already!”

Before then, I clung to a strange, outmoded idea of what independence is. But once I crossed that thin blue sign, what I found was a fuller independence of accessible jobs, housing, education and protected rights, accessible medicine and tech and yes, even decent curb cutouts and parking spaces - a whole societal push to involve everyone, to bring everybody to the decision-making table, even hardheaded fools who happened to fall upon the right decision one day, after he fell absolutely every other place first.

Viva the ADA.

Something Fishy: Here's to beautiful, boring Routine

On this hellday, hypnotized by horrible images, I'm sooo looking forward to a chunk of sanity to grab onto. Something nice and predictable and boring. I'm going to play Mr. Fish again.

During the lockdown my wife @char2go and I started drifting. It was a weird, anxious time for all. So what we tried was to exercise to a YouTube video together. It could be short, it could be easy, but we tried it. Then we tried it a second day, and then a third, and eventually it became our habit that we laughed about and looked forward to every day.

I'm a quadriplegic, she is not. She does all the movements, I do few if any. But I flop all over the place. I flop around like a fish out of water. It ain't pretty. But every day I do so, and I laugh and by the end I'm out of breath just like she is. It became our routine, boring and beautiful.

Today that routine sounds mighty good. I'm zipping into my Fish suit.

Who dat, bottom right of Skype screen

BTW congrats to my lovely @char2go for helping ring the closing bell yesterday with @PlanetFitness on the New York Stock Exchange! The sky's the limit, Coach.

#disability #multiplesclerosis #PTSD #BipolarDisorder #Anxiety #Depression #PanicDisorder #Agoraphobia #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #MentalHealth  #MightyTogether #ADA #planetfitness #move #exercise

My new article @The Mighty: When the handicap sign starts looking like someone you know

https://themighty.com/2020/12/admit-need-disability-parking-permit/

It’s an epiphany when you realize for the first time that the white stick-figure on a disability parking sign is you. That’s you. Now you may park in this fat sirloin of a spot. Now you are “the disabled.”

This leap to disabledhood is as much a mental process as a physical one. And I fought the knowledge, down the line, tooth and nail. I always do, with every new adaptation or assistive device, fight, fight, fight. It sounds courageous, but it’s really it's ridiculous. I have a very thick head.

I can’t remember the moment I resolved to pick up the disability parking permit application. It must have been some watershed event, perhaps my 3,000th fall, the one that rattles your very teeth. Falling itself was no big deal, and I might do it a dozen times in a day. After a while, my body looked like Keith Richards’ after a bender, but big deal, you dust yourself off and get back in the game. But maybe that 3,000th time was the one to slosh my brain in its comfy bath of cerebrospinal fluid: Wake up, you green-gray piece of fat!

Keep reading...

My Opa and the ADA@30

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, because there are no hidden motives.  It's all there in the name.  There's no manual, no fine print, no telemarketers.  Observe it religiously, secularly or with a simple nap in front of the football game: you can't mess it up.

What a cool holiday, where you appreciate what's in front of you now, instead of focusing on what you still want.  Where do the Black Fridayers fit into that? I like watching cartoons.

As thankful as I feel on that day, it doesn't compare to my parents, both of whom are immigrants and refugees.  They know Thanksgiving, and their parents did too.

Maybe it's age, but I tend to think about my grandfather on that day and this day too.  Opa died over 40 years ago.  He still teaches me stuff.

Already before he came over, he was in a chair. In his early twenties they slapped a polio diagnosis on him after the fact, but they never knew what hit him; they certainly didn't know MS back then, if that's what it was. (I doubt it: his arms would have destroyed mine in arm-wrestling.)  After Ellis Island, he came to Chicago.  In 1955, there was no such thing as accessible housing.  I wonder how many times he got to feel the sun and breeze on his skin in the final 20 years of his life.

They cast away their wheelchairs and wouldn't be stopped...

ADA activists' famous crawl up the Capitol steps, 1990.
 

Opa was a big man, and to me the smartest in the world. I would lug over his huge atlas and sit on his lap, and he would tell me about a new country.  I was fascinated to learn that China was thousands of years older than the U.S.  So I assumed then that every country had its own calendar; later, on a visit to Canada I silenced an entire room when I asked, "What year is it up here, anyway?"  Way to represent.

He was good-natured and strong.  It break my heart seeing him struggle across the carpet to the apartment bathroom when my grandmother was at the factory. I think back with amazement after writing that sentence: that I actually see that? I did. He hissed with effort, but I never heard him complain.  Saturdays he filled a bucket with suds and scrubbed down floors.  He didn't post it on Insta. That was what he did.

A generation later, my life, next to his, is boundless.  We each are blessed with a strong, hard-working wife and loving family.  But I live in an accessible home in an increasingly accessible nation.  I own a power wheelchair.  I order accessibility devices delivered off the Internet that to him would all be science fiction. In my garage is a van with a powered lift.  I write books, plays, columns on an affordable computer that operates by the sound of my voice.  Also operate my lights, fan, radio stations from around the world and everything else through the Echo Dot, all easy as Open Sesame.

Opa had none of this, but he sang.  He smiled.  He laughed at Granny clunking Jethro Bodine with an umbrella on an old sitcom: I loved that crazy hiccuping laugh.  He gave thanks simply for being in America.

This life of opportunities is an accident of time and place.  Opa and I were born on opposite sides of the Americans With Disabilities Act, that 30 years ago today began opening doors for millions like me. Thirty years ago I was hospitalized for the first time with MS. A nurse said, This is a big deal. It's going to change the world. 

So today I remember the people who fought to create the ADA. I remember my Opa, and wish he had even a little of this.  He tried so hard, without his courage my family wouldn't be in the US, and he should have had this. I remember, and give a lot of thanks.

Rollin' on the river - New Madrid Historical Museum, New Madrid, MO

As a kid in Illinois, part of the folklore that got drilled into my head alongside Abraham Lincoln and the Great Chicago Fire was that the biggest earthquake in American history did not take place in San Francisco or anywhere near California, but in southern Illinois - a tremor so strong that it rang bells in Philadelphia and made the Mississippi River run backwards. Later on I found out it was really centered just south of Illinois, in New Madrid, Missouri, and occurred in 1831, but in my mind it was still a monster on a par with Godzilla. The New Madrid earthquake was something I've always wanted to learn more about, especially having driven through the area several times over the past few years. It killed me that there was never enough time to pull over and check out this storied place. But now, with the RV, we can.

New Madrid lies in the bootheel of Missouri, flat river lowland prone to flooding, and it was here that I first saw cotton fields. (The lady at the museum told me how in the days of Big Cotton, one of the growers was so powerful that he nixed his land going over to Arkansas and arranged for it to go to the Show Me State instead, creating that crazy, lazy bootheel hanging there like an appendix, that makes you scratch your head whenever you see it on the map.) Present-day New Madrid has a few thousand people and its own levee on the Mississippi River, which you can see and drive upon in a beautiful river outlook that is also a part of the Trail of Tears, where Cherokee refugees waited in the cold for ferries to bring them across from Tennessee.

Gorgeous Mississippi River overlook on the levee

Less than 100 yards downhill stands the historical museum. It is only two rooms, and then a second floor. No problem getting in with the wheelchair, but there is no elevator to the upstairs so what they do is show you a photo album of the items there. This tiny place really couldn't raise the money for an elevator, I think, plus the woman who showed me the pictures told some pretty good stories that the folks going upstairs weren't hearing. The earthquake exhibits are all on the ground floor. Otherwise everything is flat and no surprises for the chair.

Upstairs

Half of the museum is about the earthquake, and the rest is mostly Civil War and Indian artifacts, plus some 19th-century household and heirloom items that were contributed by the oldest families in
town. It was all interesting, and we spent an hour and half.

If you're interested about the earthquake, it hit during a winter night and turned everyone out shivering in the cold as they endured the aftershocks. There were three quakes stronger than 8.0 on that first night (scientists now lump all three into one rolling terror) and there was a 8.0 earthquake the next day and another in the days following. Each one of them was a monster quake, and then there were hundreds of smaller ones for months afterwards. It changed the course of the river, split open the earth and left features in the landscape still visible today. (At least one of them is doing duty as the friendly neighborhood sand trap at a nearby golf course.) The cool thing is that there is a New Madrid fault to this day, although you can't see it because it's under several feet of caved in earth and sand. But I see a movie coming on here... Paging Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck.

The museum is $5 and definitely worth a visit if you like history. Be sure to check out the Trail of Tears river outlook right up the street.