Automated parking-garage

Yesterday afternoon (Friday, November 14, 2008) I had a pre-admission appointment at Rochester General Hospital — about an hour away.
The appointment is to update all the admission junk prior to my “prostrate” biopsy next Friday, which is being done at a hospital this time — not Urology Associates of Rochester.
“Welcome to the Carter St. Parking-Garage;” which wasn’t there 12-13 years ago, when we last were there.
The Carter St. Parking-Garage was built where the old Carter St. parking-lot was, behind the hospital. One level became about four or five.
Rochester General Hospital was where I first was after the stroke. I was there over two weeks — and had 89 bazilyun tests that determined the reason I had a stroke. The reason I’d had a stroke was a patent foreman ovale, an unclosed passage between the upper chambers of my heart.
It had allowed a clot to pass toward my brain.
Rochester General Hospital wanted to do open-heart surgery immediately to close the PTO.
But we held off. The open-heart surgery was done about two years later when I had better command of my faculties. And it was done at Rochester General Hospital, a Cleveland Clinic heart hospital (although I don’t think it was then).
That was the last time we visited RGH; although I think I visited there to see Matt Ried, the webmaster at the mighty Mezz, when he did cancer-treatment. (He had testicular cancer; was operated on, and had radiation. —I guess he recovered; returned to work, and is now in Denver.)
“Please take ticket!” said a disembodied female voice from the movie “2001.”
I took a tickey and parked the Bathtub — and then began my search for the pre-admission appointment.
I managed to find the right place on the first try; using the old deduction waazoo. The right place was named something other than pre-admission. “Ya mean I got the right place on the first try?” I said to the receptionist, a grizzled veteran with a heavy Russian accent.
“What do you weigh, Mr. Hughes?”
“192,” I said.
“Well our scale says 200.”
“That’s your scale. I go by the one at the YMCA. You’re also weighing my sneakers and jacket.”
Blood was drawn, and an EKG performed.
“Do you find yourself out of breath if you exercise?”
“I run,” I yelled.
“Ever smoke?”
“Never have; never will; never in a million years!” I said.
Various nurse-practioners were trotted in.
“Park in the Portland Ave. parking-garage, and follow the directions for your procedure. Use the green elevators.”
“I’ve yet to ever see a green elevator.”
“And if you wanna be able to direct your wife home, ask for mild sedation, not general anesthesia. You have a choice.”
The nurse spouted off something about MAC; some abbreviation of the sedation used.
“To me, ‘MAC’ is my computer; I get loudly excoriated for using a MAC.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” she said.
“To me,” I said; “the Messenger is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, a place I worked almost 10 years. We had people gunning us all the time; they were called the ‘grammar-police.’”
“Yada-yada-yada-yada” for about two hours.
Finally I was released to the Carter St. Parking-Garage, and as I walked out I noticed a glitzy slot-machine thingy that said “prepay here.”
Engage technology-jones; the same thing I tried to do years ago at an Altoony Sheetz to order a sub with a touch-screen.
I made it two steps (out of about seven), when suddenly the almighty Bluster-King bellowed “I speak English” to a cowering waif behind the counter.
So much for an interesting technical challenge; the Bluster-Boy had butted in; displaying little interest in fielding a technical challenge.
I managed to complete my sub order with the touch-screen a month later with no difficulty when I rode motorbike to the mighty Curve myself.
After the stroke I couldn’t even set my digital watch, but that all came back. “I bet I could do that,” I told Joy Daggett at the mighty Mezz regarding the OCR scanner.
“I bet you could,” said Joy, and she proceeded to show me: “Here, watch me,” she said pulling levers and knobs galore.
Needless to say, I figured the sucker out myself.
“Hey Quark-Man.......” I used to say to Matt Saxon.
“Well, we got this here manual, son,” he’d say.
“Get outta here with that manual! Real men don’t use manuals. Just show me!”
“Insert parking-ticket in slot,” said disembodied voice.
Okay, I see two slots. The one at the right refuses my ticket, so must be for bills.
The one at left gobbles my ticket, and then says I owe four smackaroos.
“Insert cash or credit-card. Pick button for what yaz wanna use.”
I insert my Visa in the ticket-slot, and it gobbles that. Apparently my card was charged four bucks, but no receipt, and the tickey was spit back out along with my Visa.
“Please return ticket on exit.”
But this is the parking-ticket I started in with — do I get a checkout slip?
I drive to an exit, but no tickey-taker machine; it’s a staff exit.
Back away, go around, and find another exit (one of many) that has a “prepaid and credit-card” machine.
Okay, try that. “Please insert ticket,” disembodied voice says again.
I shove in my parking-ticket and up goes the gate, letting me out.

This is a reprise, more-or-less, of a thing I wrote at Houghton in the ‘60s about the flat-topped ex-Marine security honcho trying to slurp a canned soda at our original campus-center — which was a house.
This was back before pop-tops, when canned sody was only accessible via a motorized church-key, that cut drinking-holes in the can-top.
Mr. ex-Marine strode in, purchased a canned sody, and put the can in the hole-cutter.
He managed to get one hole cut in the can-top. “Suck-suck-suck!” Red face.
“John, ya gotta cut another hole in the can-top!”
“Oh, I’ll be all right.” Suck-suck-suck!
Finally he reinserted the sody-can in the hole-cutter, but failed to rotate the can. He cut the hole in the same place the first hole was sunk. Suck-suck-suck!
“John, ya gotta rotate the can!”

My wife is worried the Portland Ave. parking-garage may have the same automatic machines the Carter St. garage has; and hopes I am conscious enough to operate them. Some can do this and some are challenged — much like the Bluster-Boy at the Altoony Sheetz.

“Prostrate” is how my blowhard brother-from-Boston noisily insists “prostate” is spelled. —He noisily insists I have never pursued frequency of urination.

The “almighty Bluster-King” (the “Bluster-Boy”) is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost three years ago. Best job I ever had.

The “Bathtub” is our 2005 Toyota Sienna van; called that because it’s white and like sitting in a bathtub.

“Altoony” is Altoona, PA, location of the “mighty Curve” (“Horseshoe Curve”), by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. (I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.) “Sheetz” is a large convenience-store operation based in Altoona. It has outlets all over Pennsylvania. —My brother and I had ridden motorbike there after the stroke.

“OCR scanning” is Optical-Character-Recognition scanning, generating a text file from a computer-scanned document. A text-file is scanned, and computer software recognizes the fonts/letters therein, generating a text file. “Joy Daggett” was the lady in charge of technological functions at the newspaper. “Matt Saxon” was a Graphic Artist. “Quark” is a computer software application for creating pages with text and/or pictures.

“Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I didn’t graduate with their approval. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college. —During my senior year, I wrote a humor column for the college newspaper.