Ridenbaugh

Saturday morning and already I know the day is going to be too hot to do anything productive. I most likely will hold up in the house till even and I most likely will not even gout then. I wish I had a nice cold pool somewhere I could escape to likeI had the “bridge” in the old days. I learned my lesson last year when I scraped my butt so bad I have literally been trying to heal the wound for a year now. I scraped the butt right here in Murray at the Murray pool, which I have been pondering ever since. When I worked for independent living I actually sat on the Murray City Disability Advisory Board. And I can distinctly remember talking about getti*ng a wheelchair lift to assist people with disabilities into and out of the pool. I was part of that small group who searched for lifts: wheelchair verses personal . I understood they were going t get one. What happened?!! I will take my responsibility. I should have pushed harder and done better follow up. I guess, I let the “ball drop” I dropped the ball. I didn’t because something like a butt scrape had never happened to me before. The need for such an assistive tech device as a wheelchair lift, was for one of “those people”. I was still using a manual chair, I was strong compared to what I am now. I could actually, back then crawl back into my wheelchair from the ground. The effort of getting back into my chair took a while and a lot of energy but I could do it. In fact, I could not see the day when I would really need such a device. I thought that day was way off in the future.

This week has been the hottest week of the summer temperatures in the hundreds rolling home from the train is like sitting in the dryer on “high”. Bouncing in my chair, each bounce rubs the “healing” wound on my tender butt cheek. I remember distant summers when of days of this kind of heat I would saunter over to the rail on the bridge and pull my self to stand on the railing and launch my self into the dark green chill of the canal. Evan after my accident even if I could no longer stand on the rail I had a “crew” who would lift me out of my chair and throw my body into the dark cold current of the Ridenbaugh canal “ride” the current under the bridge and under the pipe then swim like mad over to the beach on the South West side of the ditch where a beach crew” would drag me out of the water and onto the beach.

After such a drenching my body temperature was effectively lowered to the point of comfort on such a sizzling hot day. I wish I had images of the canal in those days but I have found someone’s FLIKER ACCOUNT of the canal. So maybe I stay inside and work on the piece for Jerry and think about the dark green cool water of the Ridenbaugh.