Tim: What do you mean? Businesses, too. Oh, yeah. He works on Saturday. Maybe he'll come by on Saturday. Yeah, but he's supposed to be here Wednesday. You want to switch to somebody? Hey, Haskell lives around here. Where's that Biss? That what?  

Mom: Biss. M I S S.  

Tim: He's Trees. He's only Trees. He's going to come and do your stump.

Okay. But he hurt his leg. He's not working this week or next. So he'll be by soon.  

Well, so Rolf isnt going to come to see his grandkids or anything? You've got to wait. He couldn't go into Canada anyway.  

Mom: They're not closed off.  

Tim: You can't leave the United States and go into Canada. Oh, right. So, he's going to have to wait until August. So, I wanted to talk to you about what you said yesterday.

I've never heard anything about that. When you said Now on the morning Dad died, you took medication and you, you wanted to know what it was? You said it was in a brown bag.  

Mom: It's the way Dr. Comerford had issued new drugs and put them in this brown paper bag and I was so determined.  

Tim: You mean they didn't come from a drugstore?

Mom: I don't know. The pills were in boxes and bottles.  

Tim: Oh, it might have been, was a bag. Yeah. They might have been physician's. Uh, samples. Might have been. You don't know what they were? No. That is weird. There'd been a, like a lunch bag. Yes. Like a kid's lunch bag.  

Mom: Yes. And  

Tim: you wanted to know what they were and dad wouldn't tell you.

Mom: I didn't want him to take them at all. I said, go to another doctor. That's what I told him. And Maureen was right out there beside me. And she felt the same as I did. That he was not good. Yeah. He didn't look. He looked sick.  

Tim: Did he? Didn't you say you also found another doctor you wanted him to see? Or did you just want  

Mom: It was one that Stu Commerford, who was the deputy county clerk, had found over in Canada.

Oh. And I thought Dad should go and see another doctor.  

Tim: So had you told Stu that you felt your husband wasn't well? No. Why would he recommend a doctor in Canada, then, if I recommend it. No, but Stu just was telling you in casual conversation about Yes. Oh, I see. And when did this automobile accident happen?

I never knew that Dad had an accident the day before. What happened, do you know? Was there an accident report? No. He wasn't hurt? No. Nobody else was? But obviously the car wasn't able to operate Right. Let's see, 1970, I wonder what kind of car he was driving.  

Mom: Some old junk. Was it? Yes. I always think he did it on purpose.

Really? Trying to take his life. Oh. At the time. It didn't worked.  

Tim: What did he hit, do you know? He hit another car. Some car hit him. Did he let them hit him or  

Mom: something? I think he drove up in front.  

Tim: He crossed the line or something? Was it on 4th Street?  

Mom: Right over here. Yes, on 4th.  

Tim: How did you learn about it?

I don't know. I'm sorry to talk about it, but I'm curious as to those events.  

Mom: I don't remember. He probably  

Tim: called. He called you? Yes. From, not from 4th Street, from somebody's house maybe?  

Mom: He was working on the water treatment plant.  

Tim: Right. So, he wrecked his car and walked down to the plant? Probably. Goosh.

But then he came home from work that night and told you he'd had a wreck? Or he called you and said he'd had a wreck? Yes. Gee. And then you said that morning when you had a disagreement about the pills? Yes. You said he sat on the stairs out there?  

Mom: Yes. At least. At  

Tim: What time was that? It must have been seven in the morning.

Yes.  

Mom: Waiting for Howard Crewe to pick him up, because he didn't have a car.  

Tim: I see, okay. You guys only had one car? We had two, but  

Mom: I was working.  

Tim: You had to have the other car to go to Motor Vehicles? Right. I see. So he didn't sit there because he was mad, he was sitting there because he had to He was waiting.

Waiting, yeah. Maureen, uh, Maureen was, uh She wasn't in the convent anymore then.

She hadn't gone to California yet, had she? It was after that. It was another almost ten years? Yeah, but she was in California visiting Brian at one time. That's just a whole different Yeah. Okay.  

Mom: That was the 70s, wasn't it? The 60s.  

Tim: Well, Margie and I were in Texas from June of 69 until January of 70. And Jimmy and Maureen came and visited us, I think on the way to California.

The two of them. Isn't that cute that  

they did that together?  

Mom: I forgot that.  

Tim: They went to California. I think it was on the way there that they stopped and saw us in Texas at Fort Hood. Although it might have been the way home, but I don't think so. It's funny how you remember an event that they were there, but I don't remember anything about it.

How it happened or what we did when they were there. They were there a couple of nights, as I recall. Megan was a little baby. She was, well, she was over one years old. She was one and a half or so, yeah. But I remember them being there. I don't remember anything else about it. I think I have some pictures of them that I, I mean, at the time I thought I was going to learn how to be a black and white photographer and I was taking pictures and they let me use the photography studio at the camp at Port Hood.

I learned how to do it. I wouldn't know how. And I'd take film and Developer. I got some eight and a half by elevens that I took then that were pretty good, but no great talent. Nobody called me to work for Life Magazine or anything. Sports Illustrated.  

Mom: But what, you could do it now if you had to.  

Tim: I could do it, yeah, I would, I could, I know how, you had to mix some chemicals and put them in a tray in a dark room.

It's, it's not that hard. You just gotta be careful that nobody opens the door while you're in there. Exposes the film. Well, see mom, I never knew about dad having an accident. I never knew about the pills. It's weird that the pills were I mean, you think Dr. Comerford was giving him a psychotic medication or something?

Mom: I told you, I never liked Dr. Comerford.  

Tim: Did you ever talk to him after dad's death?

Mom: I did, and I think I told you. He thought he was a religious fanatic. That's weird. It made me so annoyed.  

Tim: Did he say that to you? That he thought Dad was a religious fanatic?  

Mom: Well, because of that statue.  

Tim: That he was That's, boy, that's a stretch to see a little statue.

Yeah. A 36 foot, 40 inch statue.  

Mom: Who knows what discussion. They could have had, you know.  

Tim: You know, maybe he might have revealed things to him about some zealotry, but I sure never saw any, did you? No. He didn't preach? He didn't preach? No. Did he have a Bible?  

Mom: Not that I know of. No Catholics have Bibles.  

Tim: That's true.

Did he have a prayer book around anywhere? No. He had a rosary, I think, I feel guilty. I had a rosary when I was in Vietnam, and a rosary when I was in the federal system, but I don't, I don't have one now. They were useful to me then. The rosary can be useful. You know, it's sort of like a meditation thing.

It's funny, but I, I, I, why, the reason,  

Mom: If I can't go to sleep, I say the Hail Mary and the Our Father. Oh, that's good. About three times four times. Yeah. That's the best way.  

Tim: I, Vivian, I think I told you, Vivian told me she couldn't go to sleep. She's turning nine. I said, count from a million backwards. Oh, boy.

She said, no. I said, well, count from a hundred. They tell, I've never even tried that, but someone told me that it works. Oh. I knew these Indians, not American Indians, but India guys. I remember I took them on a tour when I was doing some business with Tom Fleckenstein. I took them out to Indiana. They, uh, I talked to them about sleeping.

I guess I always have trouble sleeping. We spent three or four nights in hotels and one of them gave me this kind of a yoga exercise where you start with your toes. And you think of it as either going away or going to sleep, and then you work up your body, like every six inches, up to your knees, and then you feel like there's nothing below your knees, and then you get up to your waist, and you're just like half a body, you get up to your chest, and your neck, you move right up your head, you reach the top of your head, and everything's gone.

Your eyes, your brain's still working, everything's gone, and then you get to that last inch, and it You watch that go, and you go to sleep. It worked a little.  

Mom: You're tired out from doing it.  

Tim: Yeah. So I had physical therapy on my knee this morning. Oh, how was it? It feels good. He taught me, well, you know, one time.

But psychologically it feels better. I didn't wear the strap. I forgot to put the strap back on. I'm going to go two or three times a week for three weeks. Then you know what exercises to do, but he's, you know, he's got some things there that he has me do. It was good.  

Mom: So Are you going out tonight?  

Tim: No, I'm playing golf this afternoon with Nick Amagon.

That's why I stopped here now. Three o'clock, I'm meeting him. When? Three o'clock.

Mom: Well, you can Rolfe says it's been breezy and nasty really?  

Tim: In Cleveland? Oh. This is great weather. I know. Today's the last day of spring. Summer starts tomorrow at 5 o'clock. Does it? The 20th. Summer comes either between the 22nd.

You know, it's the weather, the solstice. How things line up. And you have it down to the minute. 5. 23 tomorrow afternoon. I always thought it was June 21st, period. Right. But it's not.  

Mom: Learn something, don't you?

Tim: Try to help people learn, yeah, it's helpful. They have knowledge, isn't it? One thing I've done, I'm trying hard to cut back on TV.

You don't learn much from TV. On what? You don't learn much from TV. Although last night I watched this documentary on Roy Cohn. Oh, it was good. It's called, uh, Bully. Oh, I can't remember what it's called. It was good though. Bully, blank, victim. I can't remember what the middle word was. He died of AIDS. Roy Cohn.

Who was it? The lawyer, Roy Cohn. You know, he started out with Joe McCarthy. Ended up with Donald Trump. Was he gay? Yes. He wouldn't admit it. But he was. He was a vile person. Oh, before McCarthy, he He was a young prosecutor and he helped prosecute the Rosenbergs and sent them to the electric chair. Do you remember that?

Yes. In the early fifties? Yeah. Ethel and Julius. Right? Yeah, but, you know, their sons were ten and eight at the time of the electric chair, that their parents died. And they've had a lifelong crusade to prove that they were falsely Uh, accused. Cohn, late in his life, admitted halfway, he said, we framed guilty people.

In America, you're not supposed to do that. Now, but the boys claim they were totally framed, and especially Ethel uh, Rosenberg had, she's, they say she had nothing to do with it. You know, it was part of the Red Scare time frame, where being associated with communism, the Soviet Union, you were blacklisted, or Sent to the electric chair.

I don't know that much about that. I studied, uh, in college, I did a long paper on Joe McCarthy. He was another vile human being. Do you remember those Army McCarthy hearings? Oh, yes. With that one lawyer from Boston?  

Mom: Well, I don't remember it that well.  

Tim: Joseph Welch, his name was. Okay. He basically ended the McCarthy era with one phrase where he Asked McCarthy if he had no decency.

Have you no decency, sir? I think that's what he said. And from then on it was downhill for McCarthy. He was an alcoholic. He died a year or two later. McCarthy. There were other things that came up that shamed him. You know, I think he, he and Roy Cohn tried to get special treatment in the army for a friend of Roy Cohn's named Shine.

He was a private, like a buck private. And they wanted him to be, like, working in a general's office and get promotions. And they've interfered with the Army somehow. McCarthy thought he was so powerful. And then at those Army McCarthy hearings, a lot of that came out. Conversations McCarthy and Cohn had had with the Army brass, saying, You've got to take care of this David Shine.

And it was humiliating to McCarthy, as I recall. From what this documentary showed, and that's a bit I remember, I always remembered it because in Albany there's a theater called the Schein Ten Eyck. It's S C H I N E, and this kid was a descendant of the Schein Albany family, the theater owners. I think they had a handful of theaters around the country, Schein Theaters.

Like Shays in a way, you know? Didn't Shays have theaters in other places than Buffalo?  

Mom: I'm looking, your arms are so tanned.  

Tim: Um, I, I, I'm working outside.  

Mom: Oh, okay.

Tim: Margy's, uh, I'm supposed to call Margy at some point here.