On the Road with Barry – Desloge, MO

Day 1

Because of an early flight on the “other” airline, I’m spending the night in Houston. It was raining like crazy when I stopped for gas and a quick bite before I got to the hotel. HEB, my favorite grocery store in Texas, provided me with both. They have a great pre-packaged cranberry pecan sandwich that I enjoy, and I splurged with some chips and their homemade salsa. On my way out to the car, I slipped on the wet pavement and went down on not one but both knees, and scraped all kinds of skin off my lower body. I was wearing open-toed slides, which I never wear during lessons and require clients to do the same, simply for this reason. Even the tops of my toes are scraped. There’s a gash on my right knee that may require amputation. And to add insult to injury, my salsa exploded inside the bag and splattered all over. I managed to salvage the sandwich and finally entered the hotel frustrated, sodden and bleeding. My seat on the “other” airline is one with “standard” leg room (if you’re an infant), so this fatal wound on my knee is gonna feel great.

Expecting the worst, I got into my seat on the plane, and they seem to have removed some seats or something because I actually have room to sit down. I sat next to a young man, seven or eight, who was reading a book. He’s very polite, calm and quiet. Then his father asked to sit next to him, and I obliged. It’s a whole aisle closer to the front, so why not?

My new seat mate had apparently been mainlining caffeine since 2 a.m. and is the most jittery person I’ve ever seen. He was so preoccupied with whatever he was doing on his laptop that the flight attendants had to insist that he put up his tray table for takeoff. More than twice. He’s constantly re-adjusting his position and is all over the imaginary line drawn between seat mates. He even jitters in his sleep during the flight. I began to think that the man I changed seats with is not the young man’s father at all. I could have been sitting next to an angel, but I got a demon with the shakes instead.

Photo description: Preston uses his white cane as he walks past a kiosk in the antique mall in which he runs a store. He is wearing a dark baseball cap, a gray t-shirt, and jeans.

Day 2

I’m gonna stop writing about breakfast at the hotel. I’m even staying at a different (but familiar) chain, but the offerings are the same. This one, however, has gravy that can mask the taste of…whatever it is I have on my plate. I can’t, or won’t, do a week of gravy, so I’m gonna have to make another plan.

I’m in Missouri to see Preston, who lives in Desloge, pronounced “Duh Loge”. Looks like “dislodge”, but it’s French, and I haven’t looked it up. I trust Preston.

Preston has had some orientation and mobility (O&M) instruction from a residential center in Kansas City and from the state of Missouri, but it’s been some time. For a lot of reasons, standard operating procedure for O&M with Leader Dog is to give the person a new white cane and tip of their choice. People often buy their own white cane or are given one by a friend, and quite often they’re too short. There is an actual process to measuring someone for a white cane that is directly tied to their stride length, but I won’t bore anyone with the details.

In college, we learned to measure the cane to the bottom of the xyphoid process (otherwise known as the sternum). We also learned that, while using the white cane, you’re supposed to hold your cane hand in the center of your body and hold that arm straight out in front of you. Well, that worked with the young men from the Army on whom this process was tested back in the 40’s, but it’s not what most folks do now. We usually measure up to the armpit or somewhere close to it. Mainly because most folks don’t hold their arms out as straight as the soldiers did. The whole process is designed to give people reaction time. Braking distance, if you will. We want the cane to contact obstacles in the path before the user finds them with their body. We consider pace as well.

I said I wouldn’t bore you with the details, but maybe I just did. If you’re still reading, I issued Preston a white cane longer than the one he had, and it had a shiny, new roller-ball tip on it. He’ll get more reaction time from it, and the ball will roll over the smaller seams in the sidewalk as opposed to getting stuck on almost every small indention he comes in contact with.

From his home, we struck out onto Desloge Street, one of the major streets in town. It was pretty busy, but, if you’ve read this blog before, you’ve heard me say that traffic is your friend. It sounds counterintuitive every time, but it really can help you gain, retain and regain your orientation if you know what to listen for. The city of Desloge has recently redone a long stretch of sidewalks along Desloge Street, equipped with wheelchair ramps and truncated domes (Preston calls them dimples), the strip of tactile markers that signify an intersection. This is great for us, until the sidewalk ran out about four blocks from our intended destination of Preston’s pharmacy. We got a lot of good practice in, though.

It’s been “cold” and rainy all day, with a pretty persistent wind, so a nice, warm bowl of soup sounds good. Nobody at the hotel could recommend a local spot for soup, so I go to a chain I can trust. McAllister’s has a great broccoli cheese soup, and they have great disposable flatware, if you happen to be staying in a hotel all week and don’t like to eat in public by yourself. Every. Single. Meal. Plus, there’s baseball on, and McAllister’s isn’t a sports bar.

Day 3

In all of my hotel stays, this room is, by far, the darkest room I’ve ever had. After blocking the light from all the LED’s in the room, the peep hole in the door, and the wall unit control board, the only light getting in is from the smoke detector in the ceiling, which I can’t reach. I guess I’m a little light sensitive because I’m constantly covering lights in my rooms. The windows are the worst culprits, especially those with drapes that close in the middle. Well, they don’t close in the middle, which is the main problem. I carry chip-clips that I get from conferences, which work pretty well, but my friend Chelsea told me of another trick for that in lieu of the clips. The hangers in rooms that have clips on them for hanging pants, or the bar that friction folds into place, both of which work on non-closing drapes.

Preston and I worked on a route to the local convenience store, which, among other hazards, includes a four-way stop intersection crossing, sidewalks COMPLETELY blended into the street, and an evil, evil parking lot. We ran the route twice, and he seems to be picking up all the nuances. It’ll take more than a couple of trips to get really good at it, but he’s getting there.

We talk a lot about posture at the street crossing and how your body position can speak loudly at the corner. You want to be seen, and for your white cane to be seen. If you hold it up against your body, you run the risk of “hiding” it from vehicles. Not everyone is paying attention, but if they are, they typically respect the white cane. So, if you’re at the corner getting ready to cross, stand up straight and hold your cane vertically away from your body so everyone can see it. I’d prefer to have fireworks going off, too, but you can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find…you get what you need.

Photo description: Five different types of smoked & barbecued meats arranged in a foil take-home tray.

Before I got back “home”, I stopped for food. There’s a BBQ place in Missouri called Sugarfire and there’s one here in town. I found it on my last trip to Missouri, and, while it’s a chain and not Texas brisket (I mean, what is?), it is pretty good BBQ. Not having eaten all day (see? I documented this whole day without talking about breakfast, or the lack thereof), I got a plate called the “Meat Daddy” where you get four different kinds of meat. My hotel has a fridge, so I figured I’d have enough leftovers for a couple of meals, being the fiscally responsible traveler I am. I got “home” with my tray of meat, and find I’ve been blessed with not four but five different types of meat. Maybe they were clearing the smoker at the end of the day? Who cares? More meat for me.

I remember in my college days, me and my roommates would show up at Kentucky Fried Chicken right around closing time, and they would give us all their leftover chicken. Maybe not all of it, but a bucket-full at a time, so they would have less leftover chicken to deal with. I don’t know if Kentucky Fried Chicken does that anymore. I bet they don’t. They don’t even use the word “fried” in their name. It’s just KFC now. Us starving college kids? We couldn’t have cared less about the name on the sign. We knew we weren’t having ten cent ramen noodles THAT night, at least. My other friend Chelsea is shuddering right now thinking of me eating ten cent packages of ramen noodles. Chelsea is a ramen connoisseur and is appalled that the only ramen I’ve ever had was in a ten for a dollar pack from Food For Less in 1988-89.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Meat Daddy. Five meats plus some fine sides of coleslaw and baked beans lasted not one but two more meals. I had ribs for breakfast the next day. Boom.

Day 4

I know I already said it, but I had ribs for breakfast. Best breakfast I’ve had on the road since I had leftover ribs in Memphis. Hey, maybe I’ve struck on something…

Preston is a businessman. I’m not gonna get it right with exactly what he does, but he’s basically in the re-sale business. He has spaces rented in three different locations in which he stocks a little bit of everything, then goes and checks on it, re-shuffles everything, and adds to the inventory, based on what’s selling the best in which location. Our O&M lesson today is learning the best ways to get around each of his three spots, and we did a few residential street crossings at the end. O&M is everything, and everything is O&M. Getting around in a flea market is O&M. Locating the restrooms in a large, indoor facility with tons of turns and obstacles is O&M. O&M is everything, and everything is O&M.

When Preston and I are finished for the day, I do something I haven’t done since college. And, no, Chelsea, I’m not talking about eating ten cent ramen. I’m going to an all-you-can-eat catfish restaurant, although I didn’t exercise my all-you-can-eat option. I opted for a plate of fried catfish and the sides. The catfish fillets were massive, so I’m glad I only have two. Leftover fish is not the same as leftover ribs. In college, on Thursday nights, the local catfish restaurant did an all-you-can-eat deal, and me and my buddies would head out there, determined to put them out of business. Having tried our best, we’d go across the highway to the local honky tonk where it was “college night”, flirt with the pretty girls, and dance off all our catfish. I used to do a mean jitterbug and two-step. My friend at Leader, Meredith, can attest to that. I showed off my moves at Camp this summer. Anyway, I had my catfish, and just as I was walking out, the Halloween masses were descending on the restaurant. All the littles with their costumes on. Makes me miss when mine were little and in costumes. Really miss that.

I know I’ve talked a lot about catfish, but my cousin Lori is married to a fella, Barri, who, among other things, raises catfish on his catfish farms and then sells them to restaurants. I’m not sure what size nets they were using for this particular restaurant’s fillets, but it had some pretty big holes in it. My fillets were quite large. A long time ago, Barri would let me fish his ponds after they’d been seined. Boy, you could catch some big old cat-daddies. Me and my Uncle Don would catch and clean the big ones left over in the pond after the harvest and feed the family. He’d put a lot of fillets in milk jugs filled with water, freeze them, and send us back to Texas with a load of catfish fillets. Good times. Good times, indeed.

Day 5

Preston and I spent a lot of time at his main re-sale shop this morning, going over the things we’d worked on this week, and reviewing the route to the bathroom we’d discovered yesterday. We also discussed what it takes to make a good candidate as a guide dog handler.

Purposeful routes are the big thing. Walking around the block for exercise is a good thing for a dog to do, but it’s not necessarily purposeful. Going to the grocery store, or the barber shop, or church, are examples of purposeful routes. The dog needs to do what it’s been trained to do on a daily basis. Go places. Do things. Find specific objectives. Walking around the block is great, but if that’s all you do, there’s plenty of great dogs in your local animal shelter who’d love to do that with you. You don’t have to be gainfully employed, but you do need to NEED a dog. And if you DO have destinations, but you’re getting transported door-to-door to those places, think about how you can get dropped off before you get there and spend some time walking there. Lots of people who have dogs live outside of “town” and get rides into town to get their errands or jobs done. But what they do is get a ride, then get off and walk so that they can get the dog the work it wants and needs.

The next thing you need is really good O&M skills. The dog has no idea where your barber shop is. Or your grocery store. You don’t pick up the harness handle and say, “Take me to the Waffle House”. The dog doesn’t know where Waffle House is. That’s your job. If you don’t know where you’re going, the dog is only gonna get you lost faster than you would with a white cane.

When I go out to eat tonight, all the adults are dressed up for Halloween. I find this no fun at all unless I can dress up with them. I used to dress up with my son when he was young. He was a little fuzzy duck one year, maybe his first, then Captain America for several years. I may have mentioned before, but I really miss that. My go-to Halloween outfit is a rodeo clown. I went to school with the kids of the world-famous bull-fighter Quail Dobbs of Coahoma, Texas. He is my inspiration. I don’t see any adults out tonight that seem inspired to dress up. Some pretty blasé costumes out there. Definitely no rodeo clowns, or Captain Americas.

Written by Barry Staford, certified orientation and mobility specialist (COMS)