The Present

As of last night when I received yesterday’s Covid report, Robert was still positive. It has been two weeks since the first positive Covid test. I have no report today, so far, I was unable to get through to speak with a nurse, AP or Robert.

But here is something for your edification: a window into three days the in the ER, when Robert never got a room at the beginning of December.
Since that time he has been in a rehab facility and subsequently, due to injurious falls, and then Covid, he’s been in the hospital almost three more weeks.

 

 

The Past

 

In post 217, No Boundaries, I told you about my glimpse at a stranger who was changing the phone discs in the pay phones back to their original exchanges, at The City College of New York in the late 1960s. Hold that thought!!

Sunday, 1/17/21, I received a call on the landline which as usual, unless I know the caller, I didn’t answer. I actually reported it to have it blocked by NoMoRobo which does a good job of making sure your reported calls and known spam don’t make it through. This call was from Tennessee, and there was a name, but I assumed it was spam like any other caller nowadays. However, unlike most spammers there was a message, and as it turned out, a gentleman was calling who identified himself as a City College graduate of the School of Architecture; and he was writing a book and wanted to speak to Robert, who he said he knew was very active during his years at the school.

I was shocked and surprised, the call seemed to come out of nowhere. I called back. This lovely young man wanted to speak to Robert about his days as a student in architecture school, but unfortunately, as I explained, Robert was in a state of serious decline, had been in and out of the hospital—and in again and had Covid, (still true as Monday night) and sadly, was disoriented to time and space.

We chatted for a long time and I learned that  Robert had, unknowingly, helped this young man when, well over fifty, years ago, while a student at The City College School of Architecture when he created a scrapbook of the architecture school’s development and bequeathed it to the school. Robert was a contributor and editor to two or more school newspapers and his articles and editorials reflected the zeitgeist of the sixties and of the development of the School of Architecture: His collection of articles, essays and observations reflected the changing times and the paucity of facilities for the architecture students. Dalton, the young man who called, was basing a book he was writing on the evolution of the School of Architecture. He had scanned Robert’s entire scrapbook and sent it to me digitally.

In addition, he felt that Robert’s work at the school and his writings were instrumental in the school’s evolution: he was nominating him for an award.

I can’t tell you how uplifting this was. I had seen Robert’s archived-in-the-basement-work. I remembered reading the Tech News religiously, not knowing Robert but coming across a stranger’s witticisms. OK, to wit: I will never forget sitting with my friend Linda at her parent’s house, guffawing over (Robert’s) Tech News April Fools Issue about The World’s Tallest Erection. Unfortunately I didn’t see that one in this digital file.

And to further the serendipity, Dalton and my son are both contributors to The Living New Deal: Evan’s bent is Post Office WPA art, and there are WPA murals at The City College.

I was overwhelmed by this stranger calling. He had wanted to for years, he said, and was busy with projects, and here it is at a time when Robert is not all there. I told Dalton that I would call Robert and report back as to how much he understood.

Getting through to a patient on a Covid ward is not easy. Robert doesn’t answer his phone and a nurse is needed to help him. I was observing during the last few brief calls that he had difficulty holding a conversation and he was agitated and annoyed if not downright angry.

Hi, Rob, how are you?

Fine.

If I brought up the topic of food his voice would crescendo to a near yell; he was pissed. He had no choice in what was served and a later discussion with the nurse informed me that food choice had been limited to the covid ward and that they weren’t delivering and collecting menus. In effect, you takes what you gets, but try to explain that to Robert. He was petulant, disgusted, confused, annoyed and his raised voice and snippy responses made me uncomfortable. But I stuck with it.

I began by trying to drum up some excitement and some of his long term memory: “a young man called earlier who attended the CCNY School of Architecture, he has a graduate degree. He’s doing research in the school and came across the scrapbook you made about the school. Apparently, you saved a lot of information that is very valuable and he is using it to write a book. You were a rebel, a rogue and a scholar. And he is nominating you for your service and legacy to the school for a special award.”

OK, so Robert was hooked and listening and seemed to comprehend.

The young man wants to talk to you about those days. Would you like to talk to him?

Yes, sure.

I asked Robert if he remembered the years he went to CCNY, as he was briefly at another school in the City University. I also asked if he recalled the years he was going for his Masters of Architecture at Pratt Institute. That’s when things began to go south: He couldn’t remember the years. He began to get defensive. “Why is that so important!?”

Well, I just wasn’t sure and he wanted to know.

That’s not important!

I backed off.

I gave Dalton his phone number and that of the nurses’ station in hopes of the call getting through.

Then I waited.

A while later Dalton called me, leaving me stumped: he said he was able to talk to Robert but he didn’t get far. He said two nurses came to move him and he had to get off the phone. This not only alarmed me but made no sense. I called the nurse’s station, “Is Robert OK?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” (Was this a cover up?)

“Well, the person he was talking to said he was in pain and had to get off the phone.”

No, he’s fine. He had a lot of phone calls today.
I have no idea if anyone else tried to call.

I am baffled, as usual, by every phone interaction with that hospital.

Dalton said he would try calling him another time with my guidance. I have no idea where Robert will be. The hospital? The rehab (where he rolls out of bed and ends up on the floor with a head injury and then back at the ER?). In the meantime, Dalton has all the great information he needs, it seems, thanks to Robert’s  20-ish year old college-self who has been archiving his whole life, and insisting that nothing should be thrown away.

I began to go through the digital scrapbook. I recognized Robert’s handwriting, his calligraphy, his way of notating. His organization. I found dozens of his articles, pages of editorials. And then dear friends, I found this:

The article upon which I based blog 217, about the mystery of the phones.

Look what I found … the original publication in the scrapbook of about sixty pages.
This is Robert’s article under the pseudonym McPhilip Candlish with the phone discs I was telling you about in post 217. In addition, that is his masthead design ( he was always great in graphics and I learned a lot of what I know from him. His notes in the scrapbook are along the right margin. His handwriting has remained the same for more than fifty years. Now, his writing is almost unrecognizable as his.

 

A clandestine group of students have been replacing “functional-ugly” phone company dials (left) with their own “cheerful” ones, (right) to protest all-digit dialing. The students’ dial plate bears original exchange “Audubon” which supplants the “impersonal” 28 on the phone company’s plate.

Pay Phones Here Sprouting Flower Dials
Anti-Digit Group Strikes

Flower motif telephone dials have been appearing throughout the campus on pay phones But this aesthetic touch is not the work of the telephone company. It is the work of the Anti-Digit Dialing League of the City College.

The group, dedicated to preserving the original telephone exchange a halting the spread of all-digit telephone numbers began its work last year. Its members have been removing the dials of the pay phones, taking out the telephone company’s light blue identification discs and replacing the dial with their own yellow flower motif discs.

The new discs bear the full exchange of the phone such as AUdubon, FOundation, and Adirondack. The old discs bore the numerical equivalents 28, 36, 23.

The leader of the group whose identity shall remain anonymous, angrily states that “the all-digit phone numbers being instituted by the phone company today are impersonal. The old exchanges in this city have some meaning historically or geographically. Besides, it’s easier to remember someone’s phone number if you can associate it with that person’s geographical location.”

From The West Bronx
As an example, he cited the fact that “KIngsbridge 6-1771 is obviously the number of someone from the West Bronx. But under the phone company’s new policy, that number would become 546-1771. Where is it? Whose number is it? How can you memorize it?”  asks the spokesperson…

From the title page through sixty saved pages of work: graphic design, commentary, articles and photography, this was who my husband was in the 1960’s. An artist (oil painter) musician, photographer, archivist, historian and guy with balls. Click on the photos for the captions.

 

What is amazing: that the anecdote about the anti-digit dialing I wrote about previously would come into view and would be on another person’s mind so many years after the fact. That, so many years after the fact, Robert’s work made a difference to an individual and that person found me, called my number, blind, likely found in the CCNY directory.  That despite Robert’s current diminished capacity, his foresight, so many years ago, for documenting and archiving made a difference in the present for at least one person, who will use the information for a book and expand the audience. That he may get a reward.

Whatever happens, these memories were my reward.

 

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

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