Mom: Why would I change  

Tim: el elderberry? What? What is it? Is it a pill or is it a leaf?  

Mom: No, it grows out a shrub bush.  

Tim: Most berries do, I guess, huh? Yes. But doesn't it have some, some health, uh, benefits?  

Mom: She says it does. I'm not going to do it.  

Tim: Margie has some. Why don't you just try it?  

Mom: I don't want to. Alright, you don't have to.

I don't have to.

Tim: The only thing is, Harriet for some reason, oh no, Harriet doesn't think it would help your choking. Yeah. She sees it as an immune, uh, protector. Provides some immunity. She thinks it provides immunity from COVID. That's what she takes, you know, she's not vaccinated. I know. Does that worry you?

No. We could fire her for not being vaccinated. She should be, but she's been taking care of people all year, for two years.  

Mom: No, she hasn't had any jobs, she said.  

Tim: Really? Oh, I'm confusing her with that other woman that works five jobs. Oh. What was her name? Keisha. Keisha. So she hasn't had any work? That's what she said. In the whole COVID time frame? Maybe other people are stricter than  

Mom: She's getting married, you know. She says, I met the guy, she had him here, cause she forgot her medicine, and I had her take some of my Tylenol.

But then he came, and I was on the computer then, in the morning, and um, She said, would you like to meet him, and I said, sure. Lew, I think his name is, uh, not Walter, Willard or something.  

Tim: Huh. Nice?, no, what, um.  

Mom: An older man.  

Tim: Harriet's probably in her 40s or 50s,  

Mom: isn't she? I think so. She's got a 23 year old son that lives with her.

Tim: Is she, is she from Haiti? Is she Haitian? I don't know. I don't think she is, I don't know. When is she getting married?  

Mom: February. Yeah? And in Florida.  

Tim: Oh, a destination wedding. Does he live in Florida?  

Mom: Not now, but he used to, I guess.  

Tim: You mean somebody moved from Florida to New York?

Mom: He's been working seven months, she told me, at some factory.

Here? Yes.  

Tim: Good for him. Maybe Cascades. Yeah, paper places. That could be. The only place that hires anybody around here, in terms of factories, all the rest of them closed. You know where that is? Um,  

Mom: Hyde Park?  

Tim: No, it's, uh, you know when you take Pine Avenue toward, uh, heading east? You come to an intersection where Packard Road crosses, there's a big factory there.

There's a Niagara Falls Housing Authority. Uh, Project there.  

Mom: Oh, that's where you go up Ferry Avenue? Yeah. And you make it to, okay.  

Tim: You make that short little left. Okay. In fact, they've been having major problems there because of the smell. I don't know what kind of smell making paper boxes would generate, but the neighbors are up in arms.

There's a story in the paper this morning about the Department of Environmental Conservation threatening to shut them down.

That area. They, from one side they get that landfill that stinks once in a while, from the other side they get the, now they got a paper mill.  

Mom: Of course with this weather.  

Tim: Yeah, landfills got problems and soaking.

Mom: I mean the humid air. Yeah.

Tim: I don't mind, I don't mind the humidity, do you? Of course  

Mom: in the house. I'm in the house.

Tim: But I don't mind it outside that much either. I played, walked around. I played about five holes yesterday. Walked across the street. It was hot as hell, but didn't bother me. I still

put it on, even though it was like 530. What time was I here? I was here right at 5. So I went left here and went there.

So, Harriet was thinking that you choked on your wine. I used to choke on my beer once in a while, or my vodka, or a shot of tequila. Maybe you drank it, maybe you drank too much. I swallowed it too fast. Oh, so it was the wine. I think so. You told me yesterday, you don't gulp wine, you sip wine. You sounded like Jackie O.

Ha ha  

oh, so, well, you just have to be more careful,  

Mom: huh? Well, anybody can choke, for God's sake. Yeah,  

Tim: like, a five year old or a fifty year old or a ninety eight year old, you're right. But you were scared, you said you thought you were gonna die.  

Mom: Well, I couldn't get my breath. And that was scary.  

Did your face turn red?  

Tim: No, I don't know. How would I  

know? Well, you'd feel it. It feels like burning.

God, I think I told you once before about that time I was in Vietnam and there was a great big Chinook helicopters with the double wing, double rotors. They're enormous. They're using some of them now to take people they were taking people out of Afghanistan. I was at a base and one of those things landed on a truck filled with soldiers.

It was the most gruesome thing I've ever seen. I was with a major, a helicopter pilot who, he had brought me there with my, some other guys. And, uh, the bodies were just flying around like crazy. And the truck started on fire. We were probably only, uh, less than half a football field away. And the smoke made us choke.

We all were basically, couldn't get our breath from the smoke. Smoke, what do they call it when people die? Smoke inhalation. I didn't, I didn't go unconscious or anything, but I felt the worst I've ever felt, I'd say. And that major, I don't know why I'm telling a war story, but that major contacted me about 10 years ago and he was looking for some, this was like 40 years after it happened.

He said, do you remember that event? I said, of course I do. His name was Mr. Wallace. He said, well, we should get a medal. He described what the medal was of some accommodation for that. I said, I don't want any,  

Want anything for that. He said, well, would you write me up, write up something for me? I didn't think, I didn't, I didn't do it.

I didn't tell him I would. He's probably dead now.

But I did, I do remember now. I couldn't breathe for like half a minute. Felt like half a minute, like you said, it was probably five seconds. Right. Has that ever happened to you before? No. Really? You never choked?

Mom: Or since.  

Tim: Well that was just Saturday. Well,  

Mom: I'm eating something good.  

You want a straw? Maybe you should drink your wine out of a straw.

Can you do that? Can people do that? I think you'd get drunker. More drunk.

I should dig out the pictures. I took some pictures of that crash. About 14 guys died. No, no, not 14. I think there were probably 10. 10 guys died. 8 or 10. I don't know. Your memory gets fuzzy. I did have to write a report then.

That was a waste that Vietnam. Jesus. 54, 55 thousand dead.

Cost me two years of my life.

But I don't have PSTD or whatever they call it. Post PTSD. That's wonderful.  

No Agent Orange. You had a baby to come home to. You bet. What kind now?  

Tim: Jeez, she's grown up. Middle aged. More than, is 52 more than middle aged? No, I guess it's middle aged. It's about middle aged. But that implies you're gonna live to 104.

She might. She travels well. She was gone all weekend up in Saratoga Springs at a  

Mom: Is this Michael, her boyfriend?  

Tim: Pichevich? I don't think so, but, you know, when they worked together, she called him his, her, him, her work husband. He called her his work wife. Sometimes the line might get crossed. Is he married?

He's in the midst of a divorce.

Nick Amagon represents his wife.

He's a nice guy. He's one of these guys, he has a good job, like he had a good job at UB. Budgets things, they cut it out, he gets a better job, higher paying job at Erie Community. They cut that out and he walks across the way to Wendell Engineering where they said how much were you making at ECC and he tells them and they hire him.

He's a lucky guy. He's got a master's degree in, I don't know what, public relations or psychology,  

Did you put sugar in there? I didn't see you put any sugar in there, did you?

So, the shot glass is in your bedroom. It'll look like you're taking a shot glass to bed with you.  

Mom: Well, I did. They had two pills in it.

Tim: Did Grandma Toohey ever drink? Did you ever see her drink? You never saw your mother in law drink? Did she drink? Not that I know of. She was so old at a young age, wasn't she? Mm-Hmm. . That's weird. The reason I ask is I remember shot glasses in her house. She'd give me whiskey when I'd go in there like for a toothache.

Did you know that? No. She'd put a little brown sugar in with a, in a shot glass. I don't know if I drank it or rubbed it on my gums. I just remember a few times she did that. So she had liquor in the house.  

Mom: Maybe she drank and I didn't..never thought so.  

Tim: I can never remember you being in her house. Were you in there much?

No. Did you ever sit down and have a meal there? You never did? She never, I don't remember her being in this house. Do you? That's  

Mom: unbelievable. Well, she used to come when we went to baseball games.  

Tim: She'd babysit us? I think so. I don't remember that. Oh my, right. Oh my, really? So there'd be three or four kids in the house?

Mom: That was before June Morris, June Monin. She used to babysit.  

Tim: I vaguely remember that. I remember Suzanne Ross, too. Okay. Not much. Not much. We were in that little bedroom upstairs at the top. I remember her tucking me in or something.

She's older than Brian, I think. She was babysitting us. She's probably a year older than Brian, so he's probably 12 and she's 13. She was babysitting.

Grandma Toohey. Babysat us. That's unbelievable. I don't, I must have been like one.

How old was she when she died? 75.  

Mom: I remember she'd be here and she'd darn socks back in the day when you Darned socks.  

Tim: Really? I need some socks Darned Now can you Darn. No. Actually I don't need, we have this nice neighbor, I tell you. Did I tell you about her? Uh, Louise Brune, her and her husband, mark, he retired.

He was the actuary. For the Knights of Columbus, worldwide, they have a life insurance company, Knights of Columbus. So every member of the Knights is able to get a fairly, uh, well, it's not based on the premiums, but they, they provide life insurance to their members. And he was the actuary. He was the top guy there for a couple years.

And their kids live in Montreal, in Toronto. So they wanted to be near their kids, so they bought a house here. Little did they know that the Covid would prevent them from going over, but, um, She is, has a hobby, Louise has a hobby of knitting. And I asked her husband one day, I played golf with him about his head covers on his golf clubs.

He said, oh, Louise knitted them. Do you want her to make some for you? Eh, no, that's okay. And he said, no, what do you want? I gave him the, uh, I gave him a picture of the Irish flag. He used the colors from the Irish flag and made me these real nice head covers of four or five of them. She did a great job.

She, like, delivered them the next day. But they're getting, they get holes in them. For some reason, at least once or twice, Margie said she could darn them. I said, you, you don't know how to Darn, how do you hell, why is Darning different than the knitting? Is it a, is it darning is a repair, right? Mm-Hmm. .  

Mom: It was, it, it, it's sort of like, uh, up and  

over.

I don't know.  

Tim: Did you know how to do it? Yeah. Boy, we had to Darn socks. That's unbelievable. That had to extend their life, didn't it?  

Mom: Right?  

Tim: We used to get socks from Aunt, Auntie, Aunt Mary at Christmas. Remember?  

Mom: Probably. Instead of toys, you got socks.  

Tim: She must have thought we were like, far, freaking, Farm Irish or something.

Shanty Irish. Give the boys some socks.  

Was she born in Scotland? Yes. She probably hated the Irish. Was she Catholic?  

Mom: She turned Catholic.  

Tim: How did she? From Irish Protestant? Or Scotch Protestant? Probably.

How'd she meet Uncle Howard? Was she like a mail order bride?  

Mom: She worked at the Y W C A or wherever they had meals. And he ate there and she was a cook or a waitress or something.  

Tim: Oh, that's romantic. That's cute. Really? In Niagara Falls? Mm-Hmm. . Huh?

That's like that Fitz, uh, Ann Welch's father. Fitzpatrick or Fitzgerald? Fitzpatrick. That's how he met his wife. Similarly, she was Canadian or, or No, he was Canadian. Was his name. Ed? His son is named Ed, but he got a job in Niagara Falls, New York. He used to walk across the bridge to come to work, the rainbow bridge, or maybe the other bridge there, the whirlpool bridge.

And this woman lived nearby on the New York side and she'd see him. Finally they talked, ended up getting married. Came to Lewiston. International marriage.

I didn't know that about Mary. Were they a little older when they got married? Who, Howard? Yeah. Like forties or so? I swear he was smokin like the day he died.  

Jesus.

That little house. That house had a basement in it?  

Mom: Yes. It did? Remember, you went outside over the  

Tim: Oh, above Bilko door. Yes. Couldn't get But there was like a door in the kitchen that didn't go outside. Maybe it was just a closet.  

Mom: There was a bathroom off the kitchen. Was there?  

Tim: Okay, a little bathroom. Right.

No shower or tub. No. And then, they had a bigger bathroom somewhere else? No. That was their only bathroom? Right. No shower or tub?

Mom: I don't think so.  

Tim: My God. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, they didn't have a tub. Now there's another knock on the Irish. They didn't bathe. Heh, with the cows in the house and didn't bathe.

Did they have a dog? I remember being there quite a bit. Did she have Thanksgiving or Easter or something?  

Mom: Not

that I know of.

Tim: Did we, did we have Thanksgiving or Easter, uh, for, with like, I don't remember the Truesdales being here. I remember us being there.

Mom: We were more likely with Aunt Ann.  

Tim: Oh yeah, those were nice times, yeah, I forgot. Except Uncle Bill would take forever to carve. Geez, you'd think he was building a satellite.

Shoulda had a hot plate. The potatoes have got cold.  

Remember?

I don't like cold. I don't like food that's supposed to be hot. Yeah, I don't even like it lukewarm. What? I don't like it when food gets, you know, some people don't care. It's something, like a ear of corn? I couldn't, can you eat a ear of corn that isn't Hot? Yeah. No. I can't either. Who would want it? Have you had any, can you eat corn?

No. That's too bad. Corn's good this year. You can't eat corn?  

Mom: I probably could. Why don't you eat some? I don't have any.  

Tim: I'll put it on the shopping list. You want an ear of corn or, like, canned corn?  

Mom: An ear.  

Tim: Really? Let's try that. Who wrote this, Mom? Clay Almond Body Wash. Harriet must have written that.  

Mom: Oh, well, I'm out.

Tim: Oh, it's not Clay, it's Olay. All right, all right, I'll put this down.