Dodging the Bullet

In 1969:

·         The average US house price was $27,550. Gasoline sold for $0.55 per gallon.

·         Neil Armstrong and three others became the first men to walk on the moon.

·         400,000 attended Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, NY.

·         Sugar Sugar (by the Archies) topped the Billboard 100 song list. Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (5^TH Dimension), Honkey Tonk Women (Rolling Stones) and I’ll Never Fall in Love Again (Tom Jones) were in the top 10. The Beatles released Abbey Road.

·         X-rated “Midnight Cowboy” won best picture at the Academy Awards. John Wayne won an Oscar for “True Grit”.  Best screen play and best music went to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.

·         The first commercial 747 airplanes and the first ATMs went into service.

·         Richard M. Nixon became President, succeeding Lyndon Johnson. Dwight D. Eisenhower died.

·         Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchased the largest selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World.

·         Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi came to power in Libya following a coup. 

·         James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years for killing Martin Luther King. Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Charles Manson’s cult was charged with murder of Sharon Tate and three others.

·         The first US troops began withdrawing from Vietnam. News of the US massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai was released.

And

I was a 19 year old college sophomore.

And

The US modified its Selective Service process to use a lottery system. The lottery randomly assigned each draft eligible male a number based on his birthdate.  Starting in 1970, the Selective Service would draft men born between 1944 and 1950 into the US Armed Forces based on their lottery number, starting with #1 and working up the sequence until the required number of recruits was inducted.

On December 1, 1969 the Selective Service placed 366 capsules in a drum. Each capsule contained a unique number between 1 and 366. The number one signified January 1; the number two was January 2 and so on -- one for each day of the year 1950. Capsules were mixed then drawn one by one from the drum. The first date drawn received lottery #1, the second date received #2, and so on.*

My group of friends gathered at our college fraternity house that day to watch the drawing on TV. The lottery process meant you couldn’t know at what point your birthday would be assigned its number. We manually kept a table of dates and their numbers so that late comers could find out where they stood.

One of our buddies walked in late and asked, “What’s September 14?”

Our answer: “Oh, Christ, man. That’s #1.”

He stood without moving for some seconds then took a deep breath and asked, “Really?”

We just nodded. He shook his head, turned, and walked out without another word.

Far too soon my birthday was pulled: #92. The Selective Service expected to draft numbers through at least #200.** With #92 I was most assuredly going to get drafted. I could keep my student deferment until graduation in 1972, but beyond that, I was going in the Armed Forces.

Males on campus were drunk well into the next morning -- those with high numbers drinking to celebrate; the rest of us, drinking to forget. The most common question the next day: “What’s your number?” After that, most of us put out of our minds, as best we could, the Selective Service sword over our heads. We focused on keeping our student deferments by progressing normally toward graduation.

I married my high school sweetheart in February 1970. We were blessed with a baby girl in June 1971. In June 1972 I was graduated with my BA degree in mathematics. My faculty advisor convinced me to work toward a master’s degree in statistics. I was lucky to receive a teaching assistantship in mathematics at a large university north of us. It had an excellent program in statistics. We packed our meager belongings and moved within a few miles of the university. We rented a newly built two-bedroom apartment. It was across the street from a concrete factory and, even with that, was serious upgrade from our cramped, dirty, two-room college digs. Our daughter finally got her own room: good for her and good for us.

In September I began attending classes in statistics and computer science. I also taught two units of freshman math as part of my assistantship. My wife worked as a waitress at a restaurant near our apartment. Our daughter was a healthy, happy baby. Things were going well, and then I received notification from the draft board that my student deferment had ended. I was declared 1A: eligible for the draft.

Soon after came a notification to report to Chicago for my pre-induction physical. A couple weeks later I got on a bus before dawn for the two-plus hour ride to the medical center along with 50 or more other potential recruits. It was a quiet group on that bus.

We pulled up in front of a large building somewhere in a not very nice part of Chicago. Dozens of other buses were queued up along the street as well, each disgorging its load of potential draftees. Our driver said, “Remember your bus number: 255. You take this bus back when you’re done. If you miss it, you are on your own to return to your home. Remember 255. It’ll be in this same area when you’re done.” We filed off the bus and entered the large, open, high-ceilinged, warehouse-like facility.

First the recruiters gave us an intelligence test. As I read through the test, I thought about trying to miss every question. I wondered whether by pretending to be that stupid I could get a deferment. However, the recruiters dangled the incentive in front of us that higher scores might qualify you for officer training, which I equated to higher pay. So, I gave the test an 80% effort, figuring they’d probably seen it all anyway, and the “intelligence” test was a mere formality. I thought they might even prefer a little stupid.

Then the physicals started. We had to strip to our underpants and put the rest of our clothes in baskets which we handed to an attendant behind a counter. We pinned the ID tag for our basket to our underwear. It was quite a sight with 100s of nearly naked young guys parading barefoot from examination station to examination station. The stations were not partitioned, just different tables, each with a large number overhead. The process went like this:

“Sit over there and fill out this medical history form. Take your papers to the next station when you’re done.”

“Papers please. You’ll feel a little stick. [Poke. Scribble scribble.] Take your papers to the next station.”

 “Papers please. Bend over, touch your toes. Turn around. Lift your arms. Raise your left leg to your chest. Now your right. [Scribble scribble.] Take your papers to the next station.”

 “Papers please. Open your mouth and say ‘ah’. Turn your head left. Turn your head right. [Scribble scribble.] Take your papers to the next station.”

 “Papers please. Drop your shorts. Turn your head and cough. Again. Pull them up. [Scribble scribble.] Take your papers to the next station.”

“Papers please. Put on these ear phones. Raise your hand on the side from which you hear the tone. [Scribble scribble.] Take your papers to the next station.

Eventually we had a vision check. This was my one glimmer of hope for a medical deferment. I had “pink eye” (conjunctivitis) in my left eye. I didn’t say anything to anyone about it. I assumed that they were the medical ‘experts’ and they’d figure out that a guy with a crud-matted, red, swollen, tearing eye was probably someone to whom they should give special consideration. I didn’t believe that pink eye would qualify me for a medical exemption because it would go away with treatment within the next several weeks – and I had to treat it because it could otherwise lead to serious eye complications. None of the people that examined me said a word. I kept my mouth shut. That was probably stupid, but I’ll never know. (Pink eye is very contagious. I wonder how many recruits I passed it along to during the course of the exams.)

At the last station an officer looked through my accumulated paperwork, put it on a stack with dozens of similar folders, and said, “Get dressed then sit under the Results sign over there until your name is called.”

We were happy to retrieve our baskets, get dressed and wait. I felt dirty all over. I sat with the mob under Results.

Three big football player types waiting with me were all planning to enlist together – in the Marines, I think. Two of the guys skated through their physicals without a problem. They exchanged high-fives as they received news that they had passed the medical exam. The third guy, however, received a medical exemption: something wrong with his feet. He was disconsolate to the point of sobbing and crying on his buddies’ shoulders. His two friends were going off to defend their country - an adventure in foreign lands. He was staying home with a defect he hadn’t even known he’d had.

I thought: Tell you what I’ll do: give me your flat feet and you can have my place in the jungle with your buddies. I’ll stay home. No problem.

My name was called and I sat in front of a desk with a uniformed officer behind it. He flipped through the pages of my exam results, and then said, “You have a bi-lateral calf muscle. That’s about it.”

I asked, “Will that keep me out?”

“No.”

I asked, “Will my pink eye?”

He looked at me, flipped through some of my papers, and said, “That’s not in here.”

“Well, I’ve got it.”

He peered more closely at my face and said, “And, no one caught it. Unbelievable.”

He sighed and got up. He walked over to a knot of uniformed examiners some distance away. He exchanged some words with them while showing them my papers. A couple of them glanced over at me when he waved an arm my way. He left that group and walked through a door and out of my sight.

In 20 minutes he was back. “You’re clear to go. Wait at Section A downstairs for your bus. It departs in thirty minutes. Be there or it leaves you.”

I asked, “What about my eye?”

“When you report for induction, if you still have the problem, they’ll deal with it then.”

The “When you report …” rang like a bell in my head.

We stood outside two hours waiting for our bus 255 to leave from Section A. It was a long ride back home. The exam had taken more than 12 hours door to door. For having done nothing but walk around naked, I was exhausted.

Six weeks later a letter arrived from The President, my orders to report for induction: “GREETINGS: You are here by ordered to report …” I drank a lot that night. In four weeks, I was going to be in the US Army.

The next day I called the local Selective Service office, asking, “How do I get out of this?”

The nice woman on the other end of the phone asked me several questions about my status: In college? Married? Children? Siblings in the Services? Change in physical capability since the medical exam? Finally she said, “You can’t get out of it. You can, however, postpone induction until you receive your degree if you will receive that degree within a year.”

I told an outright lie, “Yes, I’ll receive my degree within a year.”

She said, “You’ll need to complete Form XYZ and have your faculty advisor sign it verifying that you’ll receive your degree within a year. You can pick up the form at the post office.”

I drove straight to the post office and from there to my faculty advisor’s office on campus. I filled out the form while I waited for him in the hall outside his office. His door opened, a student came out, and I barged in. “Dr. [Name Withheld to Protect the Innocent], sign this please,” I said, handing him the form.

He glanced at the page and saw “Selective Service” at the top. He frowned, sat down behind his desk and read the document. He said, “I can’t sign this unless we determine you’ll graduate within a year.”

I said, “Oh, just sign it.”

He said, “Can’t really. It’s a federal offense to falsify information. I can’t risk jail, but don’t panic. Let’s work through this.”

He pulled my university paperwork from a file drawer (1972: pre-PC, pre-Internet). He flipped through pages in my folder. “So to graduate you need 38 hours of credit. You’re taking 9 hours this semester. If you take the maximum  allowable 18 hours next semester and the maximum 12 hours in summer session, that’ll give you enough credits to get your MS degree in a year.”

Now we both knew that wasn’t going to happen. My teaching assistantship was the only way I’d been able to afford to go to grad school. It specifically limited me to 9 hours per semester. To do what he was suggesting would mean I’d have to give up my assistantship -- financially impossible. And even if I did manage to swing it financially, it was probably impossible for me to sign up for 18 hours of classes in a single semester that would actually progress me toward my major. The university just didn’t offer the specific statistics classes in any one semester that I needed to graduate in that short of time. We both knew this.

He said, “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re going to sign up for that number of hours.”

I mostly looked him in the eye and said, “I’m going to sign up for that number of hours.”

He signed the form and handed it back to me with a wink and a grin. “Good luck.”

I mailed the form to the Selective Service on the way home.

A couple weeks later, I received a letter saying that my orders to report had been deferred until July next year -- 1973. I’d bought a reprieve. I still thought I’d have to go into the Army, and I would go when called, but at least we had several months to prepare for it.

Life settled into a tough but manageable routine. I’d drive to the university early in the morning then spend the day attending my classes, teaching freshman math, studying, going to computer lab, etc. I’d get home in the evening. Often I’d leave the car running while my wife came down, jumped in the car, and drove to her waitress job. I’d feed our daughter, give her a bath, and put her to bed. I’d study and then go to bed. I’d feel my wife crawl in with me when her shift was over early in the morning. And then the alarm would go off and we’d start the routine again. It was difficult, but not as difficult as my being in the Army was going to be.

Then a miracle happened. President Richard M. Nixon officially saved my ass on 27 January 1973 by instituting an all-volunteer army and canceling the Selective Service draft.  To this day I firmly believe that he single-handedly saved my life by not sending me to Vietnam. I have an awful premonition about what would have happened if I’d been shipped over there. I also know, from having seen my buddies returning, that at the very least I’d have developed a significant drug problem. For keeping me out of all that I’m eternally grateful and it really doesn’t bother me how many other stupid mistakes Nixon made in his Presidency.

Three weeks after the announcement that the draft had ended, I received a Selective Service letter canceling my orders to report for induction. I still have that letter. I was clearly more drunk celebrating this good news than I had been drowning my sorrows when I got my letter to report for induction.

My life suddenly was lighter – like the difference between a gloomy tropical jungle and a sunny Illinois cornfield. I had a future for which I was in as much control as anyone ever is. I received my MS degree in 1974. I took a job with a large corporation in New Orleans. I helped raise our daughter, and generally I have had a good life since then.

Thanks, Tricky Dick. No matter what they say about you, you’re number one with me. You helped me dodge the bullet -- probably a lot of them.

* Later it was shown that the lottery may not have been perfectly random, but the results stood.

** In reality #195 was the highest number drafted during 1970.

The Math Class

We six remaining advanced calculus survivors stared out the open second floor windows at the sun-dappled leaves on the oak trees just outside. The 110 year-old building was not air-conditioned, but the tall windows with their low sills allowed a fresh-smelling morning breeze to pulse its way into the classroom. The spring weather was perfect. We were concentrating on an afternoon of cutting our college classes while lying in the grass under those oak trees, letting the warmth soak into us after the long Illinois winter.

Our instructor stood at the front of the room, chalk in hand, going over our homework from the previous class. He wore his usual shapeless black suit and wrinkled white shirt without a tie. It made him look even taller and thinner than he already was. His worn, scuff-streaked shoes echoed his disheveled, gray-streaked hair.

He had taught math virtually forever at our liberal arts college. Everyone described him the same way: “Quirky, but brilliant.” He had PhDs in both mathematics and philosophy from University of Edinburgh in the UK. He was such a brilliant mathematician that we weren’t smart enough to really fathom how brilliant he was.

You could find him nearly every afternoon and well into the evening sitting at the bar in one of the college hangouts in town.He always smiled at us when he saw us come in. His wife had died some years before. People who knew him well said that without her, he’d become even more eccentric.

He stuffed his college office with mathematics books, journals, and papers – on shelves, side tables, chairs and nearly every other free surface. Over-full ashtrays were scattered about on top of the heaps. The blackboard on one wall was always crammed with densely packed rows of equations, none of which could we understand. His big wooden desk was stacked literally three feet high with papers -- stacked so high the pile seemed to defy physical laws of friction and gravity.

Amazingly, though, when we went in to ask about a test score, he’d mumble, with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth,  “Oh, um, ah, yes, your test, um, ah, Mr…. , ah. Yes, your test. From last week … your, ah, test.” And his arm would disappear nearly to the elbow into the stack on his desk and seemingly blindly he’d pull out a paper or test booklet. Magically it would nearly always be the paper he was looking for. Squinting at the paper through the smoke, he’d say things like, “Um, ah, it, ah, appears you passed, sir. Only a C+, I’m afraid, but perhaps I, um, made the test a bit, ah, stout shall we say? Anyway, ah, here … … um.” We’d take the test, say thanks, and turn to go. He’d already have gone back to whatever math problem he was working on.

Today, though, we were sitting at our desks in the classroom, working through the solutions to the homework. He wrote a particularly difficult problem on the blackboard, and turned to us, eyebrows raised in question. The brightest of us piped up, “Dr. H we couldn’t get this at all. We worked on it together last night. No matter where we started, we always came up with an obviously incorrect result. We finally decided the problem must be wrongly stated in the book.” The rest of us nodded in agreement.

He turned and looked with renewed interest at the problem on the board for a moment then he turned toward us again. His pale blue eyes darted around the room, looking over our heads. He said, “Yes, well. The problem is, ah, correct, you see, and it’s quite an, um, interesting one. Can anyone suggest where we might start?”

We threw out ideas that we had tried and that had failed us the previous night. He nodded and gave a crooked-toothed, but sympathetic smile to each suggestion.

 “Yes, er, ah, um, that’s a logical starting place, but it is quite difficult, um, complicated from there.”  

“Um, yes, I can see where you might start with that, but I’m not sure that will work.”

“Ah, no, you should see quite quickly that starting point will, um, immediately lead to a solution that converges to, ah, infinity.”

When we ran out of ideas, he said, “Well, yes, you followed many of the trails that most, um, undergraduate mathematicians might try, but perhaps, ah, let me show you how one of the more simple, uh, more simple solutions might be derived.”

He faced the board, circled part of the problem with the chalk and said, “Now if we convert this to a Fourier series …”, and he began writing rows of equations on the board. “And then if we differentiate this first in x …” and more rows of symbols appeared. “And then in y … “

He began writing this derivation, but then stopped. He stared at the board, chalk dangling in his right hand at his side, his left hand pointing to various lines of mathematics on the board. “Hmm, ah, no, ah, hmmm … hmm. No that isn’t quite it, is it? Do you see? Hmm.  Ah, that’s not right. Hmm. Ah! Sorry.”

He grabbed a large eraser and wiped several of the most recent lines from the board. “Ah, from here, no, ah, first, um, we need to use this … “and he circled a bit from higher up the sequence “… and, um, substituting …” and began furiously writing more on the board. I gave up trying to copy into my notes what he was writing.

He filled the entire first blackboard with equations and moved to the second board on his right nearer the window. “Now, if THAT is true,” he said, waving vaguely at something on the first board, “then, of course, then it must also be true that …” and he rapidly wrote across the top of the fresh board.  “Um, ah, so then … “, and he wrote yet more, but again stopped with his hand poised over the board.

 “Um … hmmm … ah … sorry … … sorry … … … sorry, uh, hmmm. This, er, can’t be correct either. Ah, oh, dear."

The bell rang in the hallway signaling end of class. None of us moved. The room was consumed by awed and complete silence. We felt ourselves quietly fade from existence.

He rapidly backed up a step then stood stock still except for his lips moving and his left arm conducting a pattern back and forth across what he’d just written. He ran his right hand through his hair adding a streak of chalky white with the gray.

“Ah, oh, of course. First, of course, it’s obvious that first I must …” With that he again erased several of the latest lines of work and slammed the chalk against the board writing a series of new equations. He mumbled as he worked, “So then, of course, this means …" more symbols … “so that THEN …” more and more symbols on the second board now. Chalk dust drifted around him in the sunbeams. As he attacked the board, broken pieces of chalk flew in the air and left trails down his suit as they fell.

“BUT, BUT … then, I see … I see now." More and more symbols. He stopped yet again. He stepped back, stared, and moved back another step. “Blast! What?” His eyes roamed the equations -- left arm pointing one way, right arm with the chalk pointing another. Sweat stood out on his forehead. “Where? Hmmm. Blast. Hmmm. Where?”

He charged the board, grabbing another piece of chalk from the tray with his left hand. “But if that’s true …” smashing the chalk in his left hand against the board, “… then THAT cannot be true …” slashing through that portion of work with the chalk in his right.

His head swiveled back and forth. “BUT! Oh, of course, but …” And chalk marks again flew across the board. He wrote first with his left hand then his right. He shouted, “And then …”

Clack, clack, CLACK went the chalk in staccato sequence.

“ … SO ! AH, SO! And THEN … SO, I have THIS AS THE SOLUTION!”

With his final flourish, he crushed the chalk in both hands against the last line he’d squeezed in at the very bottom of the board. Both pieces of chalk broke in two and flew in the air past his triumphant shoulders. With a delighted grin, he literally hopped back from the board and put is foot into the small waste basket near the wall. Losing his balance, he sat down hard on the low window sill, and, still grinning at the blackboard, began a slow motion fall out the open window.

Our trance of the last several minutes evaporated. I grabbed at his thighs and another guy caught him by his outstretched right hand. He regained his feet and didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Still smiling he said, “So THAT’S the correct solution, class. Simple, really, except for that one bit. And um, well, simple. Ah, … class dismissed.”

Not knowing what else to do, we grabbed books and papers and rushed for the door.

We bought our lunches and took them outside to eat in the shade. We talked about the meaning of ‘simple’ and whether being brilliant was all it was cracked up to be. We couldn’t help but glance at the open window above us. Another math class was in session.

Mud

The building’s glass front lets lots of sunlight into the clinic’s entrance lobby, but it still smells like a hospital inside. I show my appointment letter at the long check-in counter facing the windows. The attendant behind the desk hands me a slip of paper and waves me down a corridor to my left, brightly lit by windows on both sides. The corridor is full of people. Many have obvious physical or neurological problems – amputees, paraplegics. I try not to stare. The number of wheelchairs amazes me. It seems every third person is in a wheelchair -- ‘normal’ kinds of wheelchairs, chairs powered by handles attached to the wheels, chairs powered by hand-cranked bicycle gearing, “chairs” that are actually beds with their occupants lying flat and powering them with their hands using handles connected by gears to the wheels. I see only one or two electric powered chairs. I walk slowly down the corridor making way for people coming toward me. It is surprisingly quiet for the number of people - just a background murmur of voices.

At the end of the corridor I turn left into a narrower hallway less well lit with fluorescent lighting fixtures in the ceiling. There are no windows here. Doors line each side. Metal benches sit against the walls between the doors. The walls are faded brown, paint peeling in a few places. The floor is smooth concrete – and smoother still from the constant traffic and constant sweeping and scrubbing. People sit or stand in small groups up and down the hallway. A few patients lay on gurneys.

I see a desk halfway down the long corridor and walk perhaps 30 yards towards it. A stern looking woman in a blue nurse’s uniform sits with her back to the wall on a straight-backed wooden chair behind the worn desk. I hand her the slip I’d received at check-in. She looks at it. Looks at me and frowns. She waves for me to give her something else. I stare blankly. She says, “Ka-ni’ga.” I should know that word, but I panic and give her another blank stare. “Dok’koo-ment!” she says, rolling her eyes. Ah! Document and she had said “book” first, I now realize. I hand her the thin passport-like book I’d been given before arriving at the clinic. She sniffs and writes information on a ledger in front of her, glancing at my paperwork as she does. She writes a number on my slip, slaps it between the pages of my book and hands it back to me. “Sem-nad’sit”, she says, waving vaguely back to my left and looking down at the ledger on the desk. I should know that word too, but it doesn’t register. I smile and say, “Thanks.” Walking down the corridor the way she’d indicated I pull the slip from the book and see “17” written on it. Seventeen, “sem-nad’sit”. Of course. That’s what she’d told me.

Walking along I notice the small white painted numbers on the dark wooden doors to my right. 33 ... 31 … 29. At least Ukrainian and American numbers are the same. Good. Soon I’m at 17. The door is closed. Now I’m stumped. Do I go in? Knock? I opt to wait it out. I sit on the bench outside the door. Other people sit on the benches around me. I play “Watch the natives”. Uniformed attendants periodically come out of the numbered doors and wave people into the rooms. I settle back and hope someone comes for me.

I amuse myself watching people, guessing their ailments, where they’re from, telling stories in my head. Pretty soon a large -- a very large, actually -- woman comes out of door 17. She has on the ubiquitous blue uniform. Her hair is covered in a white handkerchief tied pirate style. She looks around, squinting and asks a half-question, “Dzhon?” John, that’s me. I smile and stand up. She beckons and I follow her through door 17 into a small anteroom with a bench and a chair. A second door is on the opposite wall as I walk in. She says something and I hopefully hand her my slip. She looks at it and then stuffs it in her pocket. She says something to me. I stare. She motions at my clothes and says something again and points at a sheet folded on the bench. Now I get it. I start to unbutton my shirt. She nods and leaves through the second door.

I strip down and wrap the sheet around me. I hang my clothes on a hook on the wall and slide my shoes under the bench. I’ve left most of my valuables in the hotel. Now what? This time I decide to take action. After all, there are no natives to mimic in this little room. I knock on the second door, open it and start to go in.

The attendant is facing away from me as I start to enter. She whirls around frowning and holds up her hand in the universal sign for stop. She says something that I interpret as “Idiot. Wait until I call you.” I say “Eez-veh-ni’teh. Sorry.” And quickly back out and into the anteroom.

I plop down on the chair and wait. A single bulb in a fixture on the wall barely illuminates the room. The floor is scuffed and the linoleum worn through to the concrete in places. I hear voices from the other side of the door to the treatment room and water running. It’s stuffy in here -- airless. A trickle of sweat runs from my temple and down my cheek. It’s warm, and I’m nervous.

After several minutes the attendant sticks her head in and motions for me to enter. I begin to think of her as Olga; she looks like an Olga to me for some reason. I realize she’s nearly as tall as I am, and has shoulders almost as wide. Sturdy she is.

I pass through the second doorway into the treatment room. I’m standing in a high-ceilinged room between two empty bathtub-sized tin tubs sitting on slightly raised concrete platforms. Plastic shower curtains on the far side of each tub block the view beyond them to either side – effectively making a treatment room with two tubs in it. I imagine the entire wing is set up the same way: each door in the main corridor leading to a treatment room with two tubs. It’s even warmer and more humid here than in the anteroom. The smell is a mixture of sweat and a fresh water lake with a few rotten eggs thrown in for good measure. I hear the murmur of voices around me beyond the shower curtains. The concrete floor is wet.

Four or five paces beyond the tubs I see a red brick wall. Three or four exposed pipes run along it near the floor. It has windows set high up. I realize this room is a couple stories high. There’s no air conditioning, only the breeze finding its way in through those windows. Sunlight streams in as well. A drop of sweat falls off the end of my nose.

A young man in jeans and a faded blue t-shirt appears from the right in the space beyond the tubs. He’s pushing a wheeled cart with several buckets on it. I realize this space is actually part of a service corridor running the length of the building. Clever. The cart looks heavy; he looks hot and tired. Olga says something to him. Without breaking stride, he looks at her, nods, and continues out of sight to my left.

Olga motions me towards the tub on my right. She reaches down next to the tub, lifts a large bucket and dumps black, slick-looking mud from the bucket into the bottom of the tub. She motions for me to get in. I put a foot on a small box and start to climb in. She says something and gives my sheet a tug. I swallow hard and unwrap the sheet. Olga holds up the ends to somewhat block her view of me and turns her head giving me a bit of privacy -- at this point anyway. I quickly climb into the tub. I realize that it is lined with plastic sheeting. I just fit with my back reclining comfortably against one end and my feet just short of touching the other end. I also realize the mud I’m sitting in is more than faintly warm and feels oily. It’s little disconcerting at first, but not bad.

Olga bends down and comes up with another bucket. She upends it right on my crotch. So much for privacy. This bucketful is even warmer than the first. It’s a notch above disconcerting – not painful, but, well, unusual. While I’m getting my brain around this, Olga pours a bucket of mud on my chest. It’s hotter still. It smells of sulfur, but not unpleasant – thick and very smooth, a bit thinner than toothpaste. Olga motions for me to spread the mud around on my body. I start spreading it on my arms and chest. She dumps one last bucket of goo on my legs. She puts the empty buckets in the service area beyond the end of the tubs, then returns to spread the mud over my legs – paying particular attention to my ankles and knees. She motions me to lean forward and spreads mud over my back. I’m sweating like a horse – partially because of the heat from the mud, partially from the nervousness from what’s happening.

Olga motions me to lay back on a towel rolled up as a headrest behind me. She folds the plastic sheeting up and over me. She tucks me in like a baby. I feel claustrophobia setting in. She throws one more clean plastic sheet over me, and heads out into the service corridor. I think, I’m OK. This is going to be OK. I’m OK. And just then she’s back carrying three heavy, tan flannel blankets. She proceeds to lay these over me. I can feel the weight of them pushing my back into the mud that I’m covered in. Hot. I’m really hot. I can’t even wipe the sweat off my face because my hands are under the sheeting. I’m OK.

Olga looks at me and gives me a questioning, thumbs-up sign. I nod and give her a half-smile. I can see a clock on the brick wall of the service corridor. I only have to do this 20 minutes. I’m OK. Sweat pours down my face. Actually I’m not OK. I try to remember the Russian word for Help.

I look at the clock again. I tell myself to calm down. If some of the invalids I saw in the corridor can survive and even thrive on this, then certainly I can. I close my eyes and try to think of something pleasant. I hear a rattling noise near my feet and open my eyes. The attendant with the cart picks up the empty buckets from the floor near my tub, puts them on his cart, and pushes on down the hallway. He doesn’t even glance at me. Five minutes have gone by. Not bad. I close my eyes again.

Someone is shaking my shoulder. I open my eyes. I look at the clock and realize with a start that I’ve been in the mud for 30 minutes – sound asleep the last 20 minutes or so. Olga is taking the blankets off me. I’m done. I’m not even sweating anymore. Amazing. Actually I feel really relaxed and refreshed.

Olga unwraps the plastic sheeting and motions for me to help her scrape off the mud from my arms and legs and other places she doesn’t want to touch. I do, while she uses her hands to wipe some of the mud off my back. Then she motions for me to get out and she gives me a hand. The mud on the bottom of my feet makes the wet floor next to the tub feel like an ice rink. She indicates that I should stand where I am. She turns and grabs a garden hose that’s hanging on the wall between us and the anteroom. She sprays water on one of her hands and adjusts the hot and cold taps until she’s satisfied with the flow and temperature. Then she turns the spray on me. She washes me down from head to toe like she’s hosing down a car and then motions for me to turn around and does my back side. Mud cascades off me and through a drain in the floor.

She turns off the hose and motions me toward a shower stall near the tub to my left. She hands me a large clean white sheet. It’s clear I can finish washing off the mud in relative privacy of the shower stall. I lay the sheet on a chair near the shower, go in the stall and pull the curtain closed. Olga’s already started the water for me. I adjust it to make it cooler. No need to start sweating again. I start wiping down the mud. The shower head is on a flexible hose. I pull it out of its bracket and spray my hard to reach cracks and crevices. It’s surprising how much mud is still on me after Olga’s hose job. Every time I think I’m done, I find another spot with the black mud on it. Eventually I just declare victory. I turn off the water, step out of the shower, and wrap the sheet like a toga around me.

Olga is still cleaning up the tub and floor from my treatment. She looks up as I come out. She straightens up and points towards the door from which I’d entered.

I smile and wave. “Spa-see’bah. Thank you.” She nods, sighs, and turns back to her work.

I reenter the anteroom. My clothes are where I left them. Two clean towels are on the chair. I give myself a final drying with the sheet then use a fresh towel to continue drying off. I put streaks of black on the towel as I continue to find the mud’s hiding places. Sorry.

I’m pretty sure I still have mud in places I haven’t looked, but elect to get dressed without wasting any more time. (The next morning I’ll find streaks of mud on my pajamas.) I pull on my clothes and look around for anything I’ve forgotten. I pile the used sheet and towels on the bench. As I’ve been coached to do, I pull a few Ukrainian griebna from my pocket, open the door to the treatment room and hand the money to Olga. She smiles and nods a thank you. “Spa-see’bah. C zdah-roh’vee-yah. Do-sve-dahn’ee-yeh” Thank you. Good health. Good-bye. I turn and head back through the anteroom out into the main corridor. Outside my door a woman sits on the bench. A man in a wheel chair sits next to her.

I’ve lost track of which way the exit is. I see the desk down the hallway to my left and head away from it. In a few steps I see the larger windowed corridor leading to the main lobby. I turn right and again begin dodging people coming at me. I find the exit and walk out the wide doors onto the large plaza outside the clinic and into the bright Crimean sunshine and dry, fresh-smelling air. I’ve had my first mud treatment … and survived … and even enjoyed it. I hope the massage I’ve booked for tomorrow is as good. Or maybe I’ll take another mud treatment. I hope I get Olga.

My daughter participated in a month-long, Internet-based, poem-per-day exercise last month - NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month. One of the challenges NaPoWriMo posed for 10 April was to write a "mirror" poem: Quoting from my daughter's blog for that day (almost):

"Today’s prompt is a mirror poem. Find or think of a poem you admire, and write a poem that is a “mirror-image” of it. You can make this mirroring quite general, or very specific. For an example of the general approach, if the poem you like is about spring flowers, you might write one about autumn leaves. If you want to be more specific, you can go line by line. If the poem you like begins, “I was a blue bear,” your poem might start with “I will be a red ant.”

That prompt resonated within me for more than a month. Over the last few days, I finally did something about it. I don't know if what I wrote below mirrors one of my favorite poems or is a sequel to it. At the least, it's the first somewhat serious writing that I've done in many months. It feels good ... and it was a lot of work, I now remember.

---

Nor Valley of the Shadow

Tattered and torn,
Shop-worn with scorn,
The old man dragged his shadow.
Through desert heat,
His faint heart beat
A note increasing shallow.

And when he felt
His skin must melt,
And each breath a waiting pain,
Upon his cheek,
Like soft green leaf,
Came a single drop of rain.

Through wrinkled eye,
He looked to sky.
A drop caressed his face.
A dry smile rose
From his lost soul.
He kept his steady pace.

Moon mountain, no,
Nor Valley low.
He knew now where he must go:
The journey long,
Singing his song.
It was his Eldorado.