Cleveland
Ohio
May 2017
We’re on our way home from Cleveland Clinic in a rental car, Lisa is driving. It is quiet for a few minutes before she says, “Y’know, this whole thing with anal glands…” She lets the thought hang.
This is not Lisa’s standard introduction to conversation.
Nonetheless, anal glands are real. Dogs have them, cats have them. Bear, otters, possum, skunk, hyena, beaver: yep. People? Uh-huh, we’ve got ‘em too. But they don’t seem to do anything and no one talks about them. If we have even heard of anal glands at all, we’ve likely only heard of them in dogs.
Anal glands are sacs that are to be found in the southbound end of a northbound dog. There are two of them, one on each side, the output of which is a substance that, when secreted, stinks to high heaven.
We believe the scent is unique to each dog and this is how they recognize each other. The dogs ain’t saying.
Heck, you know what dogs do when they meet. *sniff* “Hmm. Oh, hi, Buddy.” “*sniff* “Oh, hi, Max.”
Anal glands, unfortunately, can clog up. This is terribly uncomfortable for the dog and can lead to the famous and ludicrous activity called the “boot scoot,” where the dog will drag its sorry ass along the carpet or the lawn. When the sacs clog, they need to be drained so they don’t become infected. Veterinarians are the ones generally called upon to perform this delightful cleansing procedure.
Background to this story? A bit earlier, the two of us are sitting in the cramped office of Jimmy’s, the car mechanic shop, waiting to hear the verdict on Lisa’s comatose Subaru. (It broke down in the toll booth lane.) A young couple also has their car in for service. He, in oversized ball cap, never lifts his eyes from his cell phone, but occasionally speaks and grunts and proudly talks about his new gun purchase, a used Remington 14-A Centerfire Rifle. She steps outside every few minutes to have a smoke. While inside, she talks nonstop, including mention of the inconvenience of having to take her dog to the vet every four weeks to have his anal glands rooted out and re-greased. Really!? Woman, you don’t even know us.
In spite of my stunning ignorance about guns, Ball Cap and I get to talking. He overhears us answer the secretary when she asks us where we are from. “Pittsburgh,” we say. “Oh, that’s bad,” he says, and laughs. “The Steelers. Ugh.”
“You’re only saying that because the Browns suck so much,” his girlfriend scolds.
“Yeah,” he adds, “it’s important to stay loyal to the home team. Even if they are so bad. Folks around here don’t care about the Browns too much. At least the Indians are up and coming.”
I’m struggling here. I know less about Cleveland baseball than I know about guns.
Go Steelers!
There must be something going on here in this part of Ohio. Oh yeah, a bad football team. Our tow truck driver who gets us and our dead car to the mechanic holds forth about the retched play of the Cleveland Browns.
When he realizes that we can’t keep up our end of the sports talk, he switches to hamburgers. “Yeah, me and my brother — he lives in Texas — we talk a couple times a week. He says that Whataburger has the greatest hamburgers in the country. He eats there five days a week. Um, um, french fries and onions. He says they’re the best.”
I can speak to this in the same way I can orate on Cleveland baseball, so reaching deep, I say, “We were out west when we stopped at an In-N-Out Burger. Y’know what worked for me? I got the best milkshake anywhere, ever! I wish we had them in Pittsburgh.”
“Yeah, I go to Sonic and get the peanut butter and banana milk shake. You can put chocolate on it if you want.”
Then he asks us if we’ve ever been to Five Guys. “What’s that?” I ask. “They also have the best hamburgers. Got ‘em all over the place. Got ‘em in Pittsburgh.” “Really?”
By now, I’m inclined to treat this guy to a burger at any of these four greatest burger joints. As far as I’m concerned, he can have anything he wants. This is due to two things. One is that he picked us up when we were stranded with a dead car in the torrential rain on the edge of a tornado outside Cleveland.
The second thing is that under our feet in his filthy tow truck, he has placed Superman floor mats. At the right moment, I pull out my camera and show him something that someone with Superman floor mats would appreciate. On my little camera screen is a one-hour-old photograph of Jerry Siegel’s house. I took this photograph.
In the 1930s, Jerry, along with his teenage friend Joe Shuster, created a character they called Superman. Jerry wrote the stories and Joe drew the images. Joe is the one responsible for the big “S” on the chest, the cape and the primary colors of his costume. Everyone knows that Superman was born on another planet, but still, you could say that Jerry’s house, the one in the little view screen of my camera, is the house where Superman originated.
Superman had two fathers.
Cleveland Clinic? Uh-huh. Here is the doctor. He walks into the exam room with a big smile on his face, his hand offered to shake. He introduces himself by his first and last names, and then instructs us to call him by his first name, Greg. We talk, he pokes, we discover the possibility that we are clones of each other. I mean…
We both have had low back surgery; we’ve both had repairs to our Achilles tendons; I teach anatomy, he is a doctor, a profession which depends to a certain extent on anatomy; we both present Ethics for continuing education; Greg played in a band, I worked sound for a band; we both played guitar, badly; we both have a slightly elevated PSA level; we’re very close in age; he ravaged his knees in basketball, I ravaged mine in volleyball. Greg and I have in common a number of other physiological data points; if you need to, you can access them by looking at my medical chart. Part of my intake was to tell him that I don’t drink alcohol. If that weren’t the case, we might spend the rest of the day in a bar.
After our session, we shake hands and part friends. Lisa and I have a little extra time before we need to get her to the airport in Pittsburgh — she is flying out tonight for business — so we drive twenty minutes to the northern section of Cleveland to see Jerry Siegel’s house, where Superman was born.
I am able to take a few photographs just before those fateful rains come. Like driving through a swimming pool.
On the road again after our Clinic visit and the drive-by of Superbaby’s home, driving carefully when the rain comes in blinding torrents, we are blithely on our way. Then we hear a noise. I look at Lisa. She says, “Yep, that’s my car.”
The check engine light comes on, the noise gets louder, the rain gets heavier. “Let’s pull off the highway. We’ve got to get this looked at.” We drive through the Route 14/Streetsboro toll booth and roll about ten more feet. At this moment, the car turns itself off. I envision it placing arms akimbo and saying, “I’m done, suckers.” Dead in the water.
Who knew, stuck in a comatose vehicle in the torrential rain-of-biblical-proportion that we were soon to learn about anal glands.