The old directions Jones

So here we are today (Tuesday, April 8, 2008) deep within the bowels of mighty Strong Hospital in Rochester.
We are there so Linda can get a CAT-scan to verify that her lymphoma is in remission.
The CAT-scan is not at Wilmot; a branch of Strong Hospital.
It’s in the Radiology Department.
Linda calls last week to try to get a location of “Radiology.”
“Where was your first CAT-scan done, M’am? Strong or the abandoned minimall?”
“Strong.”
No location of Radiology was ever spilled, so we’d have to wing it. We’d passed an Information-Desk on the way to Wilmot.
We hit an Information-Desk.
“Follow the green tabs down this long hallway, make a left; and continue following the green tabs until the Green Elevators. Go down to the Ground Floor, and then follow the signs to Radiology.”
We follow the tabs; but the Green Elevators ain’t green. They’re silver like almost every elevator on the planet.
We proceed to the Ground Floor, and find Radiology.
Finished with Radiology we depart, back into the bowels of Strong Hospital. (The power better not go; I’ve yet to see a window.)
“Now what?” Linda says.
“Well, we came in this way,” I say.
Back we go, down the long hallway, and back to the parking-garage.
We navigate into the parking-garage. “I don’t see the cut-through,” I say to myself. We’re in the wrong lane, so zap over, and there’s the cut-through.
It’s called the old directions Jones, chillen.
I still have it — if I didn’t, Linda would be up-the-creek. (We work as a team.)
And far as I know the sun still comes up in the east, and sets in the west — which means as I drive I pretty much always know where south is; except on Shipley Road in northern Delaware, where a direction-anomaly apparently occurs.
Many years ago I observed that I was walking into the dawning sun as I walked Shipley (barefoot in eight-inch deep snow) toward Brandywine High School; and that as I walked home, it was toward the setting sun.
But that was just a dream.
On Shipley the sun dawns in the west and sets in the east.
And turning left on F-A-U-L-K toward Brandywine is turning south.

“Linda” is my wife of 40+ years. She has lymphatic cancer. (It’s treatable — she will survive.)

“Wilmot” is Wilmot Cancer Center in Rochester.

RE: “The abandoned minimall......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston admitted his colonoscopy was performed in a minimall clinic, and was therefore superior to mine, which was performed in a hospital.

RE: “Directions Jones.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston noisily claims I have no sense of direction, although his recollection of where we got off of Interstate-80 on a motorcycle-trip was clearly WRONG.

RE: “Shipley Road.....” —My loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston and I have been having an argument about which way a road (Shipley) goes in northern Delaware, where we grew up; me as a teenager. I say the road goes west-east; he says it goes north-south. Actually it goes northwest-southeast.

“Brandywine High School,” north of Wilmington, DE, is from where I graduated in 1962.

RE: “That was just a dream......” —Every observation I ever made that contradicts the blustering of my macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston was “just a dream.”

RE: “F-A-U-L-K........” —For years my brother-in-Delaware and I have been having an argument about the spelling of “Foulk” Road. When we moved there in 1957 it was spelled “F-a-u-l-k.” He noisily insists it’s always been spelled with an “O.” —Turning toward Brandywine on Foulk was turning north.