A Crate of Oranges 0 (0)

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Brian H. Gill
Various citrus fruit crate labels, early to mid-20th century: Airship Brand; Loot of Ventura County Brand; Sunkist California Dream Brand; All Year; Sunkist (with image of an airship similar to Santos-Dumont number 6). From Antique Label Co. via 'Airships and Oranges: The Commercial Art of the Second Gold Rush', Sarah C. Rich, Smithsonian Magazine (March 1, 2012)
Citrus fruit crate labels: California dreaming and oranges, early to mid-20th century.

Number-three daughter asked me to see if I could get a pomegranate. This was a week or so back, in mid-January.

There weren’t any in the produce section. Or, rather, I didn’t see any. So I asked when, or if, they’d be there.

Turns out that I’ll have to wait for the right season: early winter.

I wasn’t surprised.

I’m impressed that we can get any out-of season fruit. And that so much of what’s in the produce section won’t grow here in the Upper Midwest. Being as old as I am, with a pretty good memory, helps.

The pomegranates that weren’t there brought to mind a cluster of memories involving a wooden crate, sincerely awful oranges, and a posthumous sense of gratitude.

Out of Season Oranges, Remembered

California Giant Brand Lettuce Crate Label, Growers Produce Dispatch. Catalog number 2000.3005.11. Via National Museum of American History - Behring Center. (1940s?) see https://www.si.edu/object/california-giant-brand-lettuce-crate-label%3Anmah_1896413Somewhere during my preteens, my father got a crate of oranges. How or where he got it, I didn’t know then, and still don’t.

We were in the basement of 818, in the unfinished part near the furnace, probably during winter. The crate was, as I recall, on a table; or maybe on a storage chest.

At any rate, it was a wooden crate: a bit like the one in that “California Giant Brand Lettuce” crate label. Only wider, nowhere near as finished-looking — and, of course, it held oranges: not lettuce.

I think the ends were solid wood, without a label, but with lettering stamped on them. But I’m not sure about that. It’s been a long time. This would have been in the 1950s.

The crate’s slats — this I do remember — were intact, but splintery. And the crate held a good number of oranges.

My father was excited about opening the crate and giving me an orange. I shared his excitement, until I tried eating it.

I knew what oranges tasted like, and recognized a faint echo of that taste. But mostly, I was aware that I had a mouthful of something fibrous, tough, and — being tasteless would have been an improvement.

I have acquired a degree of thoughtfulness and reserve over the intervening decades. But I was a preteen then, and told my father exactly what it tasted like.

It wasn’t until much later that my father mentioned bits and pieces of his childhood memories related to oranges. Long after that, I put the pieces together.

I think I know what my father had in mind when he got that crate of oranges.

A Cherished Memory and a Belated ‘Thank You’

Various citrus fruit crate labels, early to mid-20th century: Have One Brand; Truth Brand; Superfine Brand; Passport Brand, R. H. Verity, Sons, and Co.; Ramona Memories; Windermere Brand. From Antique Label Co. via 'Airships and Oranges: The Commercial Art of the Second Gold Rush', Sarah C. Rich, Smithsonian Magazine (March 1, 2012)
Oranges and Truth (Brand), Ramona and a black roadster. Citrus fruit crate labels.

His father had, when possible, gotten a crate of out-of-season oranges for his family. It was a high point of their year.

How a blue-collar Irishman in northern Illinois during the Roaring Twenties (or thereabouts) managed it, I don’t know.

But my father’s not unlike his father, and I inherited at least part of my father’s knack for getting things done. Or, rather, mentally gnawing at a process until I made it happen.

Whatever it is that puts us off the 50th percentile, it’s almost certainly genetic, and that’s another topic.1

The point is that getting a crate of off-season oranges was a bright spot in my father’s family memories: one that he wanted to share with me, both as one of his memories, and as part of my experience.

I had responded with an accurate, but unappreciative, description of the crate’s contents.

That was the first and the last crate of oranges he got.

Decades passed before I put the pieces together, and realized what he had intended.

So I’m saying now what I should have said then.

Thank you, Dad. I really appreciate those oranges. Thank you very much.

More Memories

Brian H. Gill. (March 17, 2021)There’s a cryptic reference up there: “…in the basement of 818”. It’s the house I grew up in, one of them.

I mentioned it in the November 23, 2024 post, under ‘Getting Started: Cats, Homes, and an Incendiary Stove’. You’ll see it in the usual link list, below.

I started sharing ‘family stories’ last November, and don’t see running out of them any time soon.

One, involving something I don’t remember, will wait until the days are longer and I’m feeling a lot more chipper.

I touched on it in the December 28, 2024, post, under ‘Desolation, Dissatisfaction, Depression, and a Prayer’. Anyway, I’ve talked about my father before.

He’s a hard act to follow:

1 I’m not ‘normal’, which is a good news / bad news situation:

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Early Diagnosis, Tardy Treatment, and a Gimpy Hip 0 (0)

Posted on January 25, 2025 by Brian H. Gill

When I was in college, first time through, someone who had one leg in a cast struck up a conversation with me. He was clearly not having a good time.

His leg, particularly his foot, was healing from a motorcycle accident. It hurt. Even worse, he worried that when the muscles grew back, they wouldn’t work right.

He had legitimate concerns. He may also have expected somewhat more heartfelt sympathy than I showed. He’d started talking with me because he noticed that I was walking with a cane.

I tried to provide the social connection he apparently wanted. How successful my effort was, I have no idea.

The conversation did, however, help me appreciate how lucky/blessed I was. Being born with defective hips, I never faced the adjustments he was dealing with.

On the other hand, I live with the results of a doctor’s decision to use me for his research. Without my parent’s knowledge.

Hip Dysplasia and Me

Most of us start out with bodies that are in good working order. A few, about 3%, don’t. Some birth defects can be easily fixed: these days, at least. Others get in the way of what most of us call a “normal” life, and some are fatal.

A birth defect I’ve been up close and personal with is hip dysplasia.

Our hips have ball-and-socket joints, letting our legs rotate in several different directions. For most folks, these joints work fine: sometimes for life, sometimes with no problems until well into middle age.

Occasionally something goes wrong, and the socket part of that joint isn’t deep enough.

Hip dysplasia is doctor-speak for this problem. The odds for being born with this problem, or developing it in infancy, are about one in a thousand.

The good news is that for many folks, the condition isn’t all that serious. When it is, we’ve got options for treating it. Some are less disagreeable than others.

Serious or not, spotting hip dysplasia early is a good idea. Which is why newborn health checks now include moving the legs in a particular way: a ‘click test’.1 It was probably routine in my part of the world by the time I was born, in 1951.

When a doctor my parents trusted gave me the ‘click test’, I screamed. He said something like ‘that hurts, does it?’

Shock at the Reference Desk

My parents may have started wondering about my muscle-and-joint health when I was six months old, and still had trouble rolling over.2 Or maybe not. I don’t know when they learned that I had congenital hip dysplasia.

By the time I was in kindergarten, or maybe first grade, I’d had two operations. But I could walk, and I’m getting ahead of the story.

The doctor who diagnosed congenital hip dysplasia shortly after my birth should, I think, have told my parents. I’ll grant that my opinion is biased.

I don’t know what the American version of medical ethics said about that sort of thing, back in 1951. Maybe what he did was officially “ethical”.

Those were interesting times.3 So are these, for that matter.

At any rate, he kept the diagnosis to himself and had my parents bring me in at intervals to see how my hips were developing. Or, as it turned out, not developing.

He kept records about what was happening to me. Then he wrote a learned paper on the topic of untreated congenital hip dysplasia.

A medical journal published his article.

A copy of the journal wound up in a college library’s collection.

My father worked in that library. He was head librarian, which let him get assigned to the reference desk as often as the rest of his job let him.

Reference desk duty wasn’t, I gather, the favorite task for most. But the long intervals between someone coming with a question gave my father time to read.

His interests were as eclectic — or unfocused — as mine, which may help explain why he pulled a medical journal off the shelf for ‘reference desk’ reading.

That’s when he read the doctor’s learned paper.

Responses

My father identified me as the test subject.

My mother intercepted him before he reached the doctor.

She told my father, “no: I will speak with him”. Which she did.

And never shared what they discussed.

Letting an incandescent Irishman conduct the interview might have been the more humane choice. The doctor disappeared a few days later.

Options, Operations, and Outcomes

Sometimes putting an infant in a cast, keeping the legs at an angle that helps the joint grow properly, corrects hip dysplasia.

On the advice of another doctor, my folks had me put in a cast. Years later, they told me that my legs were stuck out straight; like a frog’s.

It was heavy, but I suspect that dragging myself around helped me build upper body strength.

Anyway, it didn’t work.

So a surgeon sculpted a deep-enough socket from bone he took from my left femur.

Good news: after the operation, I learned to walk.

Not-entirely-good news: something went wrong, but the doctor spotted it.

After another operation, I still had a moderately-functional left hip joint. Which I see as good news.

But a bit of cartilage that should have been between the two bones wasn’t there any more.

Leondardo da Vinci: a drawing of the human skeleton. (ca. 1511)Another oddity was that my left femur came straight up to the hip socket. That probably explains why I couldn’t — and can’t — extend my left leg to the left.

I can, actually, but I have to reach down and pull it. I’m not convinced that those muscles are still there.

Even if they were, they wouldn’t have had the leverage to work properly.4

Having a left hip that acted as if it was a stiff hinge joint was an inconvenience.

What hurt, literally, was the missing cartilage. Without it, that joint had no lubrication. Whether I was sitting, standing, walking, or running: the bone of my femur was rubbing directly on my pelvis.

Lying down was no picnic, either, but early on I learned how to arrange my legs so that I could sleep.

And I could walk, thanks in part to distinctly uncomfortable physical therapy that kept my left hip joint somewhat mobile.

So, basically, and on the whole — good news.

A Failed Prediction

Fast-forward to when I was about 12. My parents and I were living in Minnesota’s Metro/Twin Cities area, and had another medical expert look at me.

He said I’d be completely and totally crippled by the time I was 16. Unless my parents let him try out a nifty procedure. No guarantees made or implied.

Later, they asked me how I felt about it. I said that if it had to be done, it had to be done. They declined the expert’s offer anyway.

That doctor may have been on the level. I’m no expert, but X-rays showing late-stage arthritis look a bit like X-rays of my hips. So maybe, given his experience, he assumed that I really would be completely crippled in a few years.

That didn’t happen.

Decades later, my wife told me I was getting replacement hip joints. I suspect she’d gotten tired of seeing me grind my way from one part of the house to another.

Two operations later, I was a couple inches shorter. I was also able to move without experiencing discomfort. For the first time in my life.

I definitely see that as good news.

A Birth Defect That’s Not a Birth Defect?

Turns out that hip dysplasia isn’t the only quirk I was born with.

My medical records now include ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder): both diagnosed when I was well into middle age. Actually, it’s ADHD-inattentive. Hyperactive I am not.

Apparently ADHD, inattentive or otherwise, “is primarily genetic with a heritability rate of 70-80%”.5 That makes sense to me, since I’m much like my father and some of the kids are much like me.

Google’s AI Overview told me that:

“Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that’s present at birth or develops shortly after. It’s not a birth defect, but it’s likely caused by a combination of genetics and environmental factors.”
(Google AI Overview (January 21, 2024)) [emphasis mine]

Saying that something is a disorder present at birth and not a birth defect could be another example of how AI is still a glitchy new technology.

Or maybe the assertion reflects one aspect of my culture’s growing understanding that someone can live with disorders and disabilities, and still be a person who deserves a measure of respect.

Take how the CDC handles the term “birth defect”, for example:

“…While ‘birth defect’ is a medical term, it does not mean that an individual is ‘defective.’ It refers to health conditions that develop in a baby before birth. In an attempt to be accurate and sensitive, we try to use the specific name of the condition present at birth when possible….”
(About Birth Defects, CDC (U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention))

Time for me to wrap this up with a very brief look at how I see life, health, and all that.

Life is precious, a gift from God.

Being healthy is okay. So is not being healthy: although trying to stay or get healthy is a good idea, within reason.

Human beings are people, and people matter. Which should be obvious, and that’s yet another topic.

Medical ethics matter, too. Because, again, human beings are people: whether they’re doctors, patients, test subjects, infants, or old geezers like me.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. I’ve talked about it before:

1 “Birth defects” may not be a polite term, but checking for them makes sense:

2 Milestones on the 50th percentile highway:

3 We keep learning, the trick is learning the right lessons:

“…John Lantos, a pediatrician at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and expert in medical ethics, says the experiments were indicative of America’s post-war mindset. ‘Technology was good, we were the leaders, we were the good guys, so anything we did could not be bad,’ he says. It wasn’t until the ’70s, after the Tuskegee study, that Congress passed federal regulation requiring a specific kind of oversight.’…”
(“A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down”, Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine (March 8, 2017)
(Quoted in “Good Nutrition, Radioactive Breakfast Cereal” (June 24, 2023) > Mindsets)

4 Bones, cartilage, and muscles:

5 ADHD, ASD, and (apparently) viewpoints:

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A Prayer For America: Seems Reasonable 0 (0)

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Brian H. Gill

Monday’s presidential inauguration may edge the Los Angeles wildfires off the top of my news feed. Momentarily, at least.

About that, and results of the election: I’m not political.

I haven’t and won’t frantically declare one candidate or party as America’s Only Hope, or hysterically denounce another as That Which Will Destroy Our Fair Nation. Maybe that’s why I’m not giddy over the election results. Or plunged into the depths of despair.

I do, however, give a rip about what happens in my country and in my world.

I have precious little control over national and world events, but there’s something I can do: pray.

A Prayer for Healing, Help, and Guidance

I added a few prayers to my daily routine last month, including this one:

God of all nations,
Father of the human family,
we give you thanks for the freedom we exercise
and the many blessings of democracy we enjoy
in these United States of America.

We ask for your protection and guidance
for all who devote themselves to the common good,
working for justice and peace at home and around the world.

We lift up all our duly elected leaders and public servants,
those who will serve us as president, as legislators and judges,
those in the military and law enforcement.
Heal us from our differences and unite us, O Lord,
with a common purpose, dedication, and commitment to achieve liberty and justice
in the years ahead for all people,
and especially those who are most vulnerable in our midst.

Amen.
(Prayer After an Election, Prayers and Devotions, USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops))

The prayer is labeled “Prayer After an Election”. But to me it looks like one that’s appropriate for any time. Particular when, as a nation, we’re coming off a publicity bender like last year’s political pandemonium.

Judging from what I’m seeing in my news feed, this year will be more of the same.

On the ‘up’ side, decades of noticing disconnects between what partisan doomsayers and publicists say and what the rest of us live with — I don’t think this year will bring either utter disaster or the dawn of a golden age.

Why Share This Prayer?

I think praying is a good idea.

Asking for help with what I can do: that strikes me as reasonable.

Which is why I’m sharing this prayer. No pressure: but it’s short, the goals seem reasonable, and asking for “protection and guidance” sounds like a good idea.

I’ve talked about this sort of thing before:

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Kids, a Subway Station, and Offhand Advice 0 (0)

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Brian H. Gill
Google Street View's photo: Powell Street, San Francisco, California. (March 2022)
A cable car on Powell Street. San Francisco, California.

One of the many things I liked about living in San Francisco was the city’s public transportation system.

I don’t know about the situation now. But a half-century ago I could get up, eat breakfast, catch a cable car, connect with a bus, and be at work on time.

Getting back was another matter. By late afternoon, agreement between the bus route schedule and actual running time was at best approximate. I got in the habit of walking toward downtown until a bus came along, leaving the bus near the Embarcadero Center, and walking from there. After a cup of coffee.

InvadingInvader's photo: 'An A-class BART train pulling into Civic Center UN Plaza Station in November 2022.' (November 23, 2022)My weekday routine didn’t involve BART, San Francisco’s rapid transit system. But I used my BART card fairly often, partly to get places faster than a bus would take me, partly because I liked the then-new system.

I’ll admit it. I’m a technophile. So was my ancestor Arba Zeri Campbell. That’s a story for another day. The main point for today is that I was in the downtown BART stations fairly often. And when I was, it was during the less-busy hours.

Not Really Advice: More Like an Observation

BART.gov's photo: a BART train with passengers boarding. (1972)
1972: the latest in fast urban transit: a BART station.

One day — I’m guessing it was a Saturday afternoon, but that’s just a guess. Anyway, one day I was waiting in a downtown BART station.1 I was alone, except for three other folks: two boys and an older girl.

I’m guessing she was their sister, partly because of their conversation’s tone.

The two boys were sitting on the edge of the platform, dangling their legs over the tracks. The girl/young woman was exhorting them to stand up and back away from the edge. Urgently, and unsuccessfully.

She was getting frustrated, the boys were enjoying themselves.

They might have had time to remove their legs from the area that’d be occupied by a train, since we were some distance from the platform’s end. Then again, maybe not.

The boys were early adolescents, or thereabouts: at one of those ages where individuals in my half of humanity can generally be relied on to exhibit energy, enthusiasm, and an appalling lack of wisdom.

I wasn’t exactly sympathetic with the one I figured was their older sister.

The other half of humanity includes some individuals who, from an early age, exhibit a degree of poise and aplomb generally associated with international diplomats. She was not one of those individuals. Neither am I, for that matter.

I think it was when one of the boys glanced back at me that I said “helluva young age to lose your legs”.

By the time I’d finished saying “legs”, they were both looking at me: briefly, before scrambling up. Fast. They’d probably have been able to get their legs out of the next train’s way with seconds to spare.

Then the train I was waiting for came. I got on, and haven’t seen any of them since.

That Voice

I don’t, can’t, know why those two boys picked that moment to stand up. But that won’t keep me from speculating.

Brian H. Gill. (March 17, 2021)I suspect part of an explanation is my appearance. Even then, I had a bushy black beard: and had been using a cane for years.

Seeing someone who looked like that — and might actually be one leg short of the usual quota — might have encouraged a re-evaluation of leg-dangling’s benefit-risk ratio.

Then there’s my voice. I could do a credible “Smoky the Bear” imitation in sixth grade, and sounded like James Earl “Darth Vader” Jones long before Star Wars opened.2

Come to think of it, Star Wars came out in 1977. I was in San Francisco during 1978 and 1979.

Whatever their reasons, the kids got up and their sister(?) stopped fussing. I’ll take that as good, or at least neutral, news.

Talking about those kids and the station platform reminded me of another BART story, but that’ll keep for another time.

Now, some vaguely-related posts:

Bryan Costales' photo: 'Just inside 4 Embarcadero Center from the pedestrian extension of Sacramento Street was the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf'. (November 24, 2012) (c) 2013 Bryan Costales, via bcx.news, used w/o permission
A coffee and tea shop in the Embarcadero Center. Photo by Bryan Costales. (2012)

1 Mostly about getting around in and around San Francisco:

2 Voices from the past:

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Grogu, a Christmas Stocking, the Liturgical Year, and Me 0 (0)

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Brian H. Gill

Product photo from Amazon.com: '...Christmas Inflatable Yoda The Child Holding A Christmas Stocking Indoor/Outdoor Decoration'. Inflatable Grogu, similar to one displayed in a front yard near me. (January 10, 2025)I learned, long ago, that being “pretty sure” about something wasn’t necessarily the same as being right.

Take what I was “pretty sure” about last month, for example:

“…Folks living in the next block north of our house have inflatable yard decorations out and lit up for this Christmas season. So, on my way to Mass, I drove by Baby Yoda and SpongeBob SquarePants wearing a festive Santa hat.

“Baby Yoda is holding what I’m pretty sure is an orange Halloween treat bag….”
(“Christmas: Family, Lights, and a Little Weirdness” > Holiday Weirdness (December 28, 2024))

The neighbor’s Baby Yoda/Grogu’s Christmas stocking didn’t seem as bright red as the one in that promotional photo. But the symbol on it was the same. And it was clearly a Christmas stocking.

Then, when I was writing last week’s post (“A Short Look at a Small Dog…”), I was pretty sure that the Christmas season ended on Epiphany Sunday. More accurately, I wasn’t thinking about that particular aspect of the liturgical calendar.

I was wrong. Christmas season ended last Sunday, January 12, when we celebrated the baptism of Jesus.

As mistakes go, this one wasn’t all that serious.

But it was embarrassing, and another reason for me to be very glad that I’m not responsible for planning what we do and when we do it during Mass. We have folks who are a great deal more qualified than I am for that sort of thing.

This is an ‘unscheduled post’, so I won’t go on about our liturgical year, cycles, and the year’s seven principal celebrations. Some of that’s discussed in first few pages of the following resource:

I’ve talked about lawn decorations, holidays, and why we celebrate, before:

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