Jerry Manley, also known as “Chuckles,” a name he hated but that we stuck him with, since he offered none when we were “christening” News Brothers back in 1982, is alive.
Not well, but alive. And he’s watching television all day,
when he’s not eating.
Many people who have some sort of dementia forget to eat.
Not Jerry. He eats all the time, according to his wonderful nephew Steven, who
takes care of Jerry down in the house they share in Lewisburg.
He’s doing the job Jerry’s children should be doing, but I
guess they don’t have time or energy.
Steven, who was a chef and worked at night, quit that job to
work as a construction crew boss many months ago. He did that so he could be
home at night, feed his uncle, take care of
his other needs.
When he leaves during the day, Steven leaves food in
portions available so Jerry won’t eat everything all at once. “I think he just
forgets that he has eaten, so he gets hungry again.”
Jerry apparently sleeps and eats and watches TV day and
night. Not altogether a horrid retirement, as long as he’s got Steven to help
him.
According to his nephew, who is back-burnering some of his
own health woes, Old Chuckles generally knows who he is and who Steven is, and
he makes it to the bathroom on his own.
I worried (or really knew) that he wasn’t making it to the bathroom on
time when he lived in the nuthouse near me for most of a year.
You may recall that I visited him once or twice a week for
10 months, carrying illegal foodstuffs Diet SunDrop and cheese or peanut butter
crackers with me for him to devour as we watched TV and he enjoyed the brand
new episodes of Gunsmoke, Columbo and The Twilight Zone.
Of course, he got tossed from that old-nuts-and-derelicts
home for pile-driving his roommate a couple of times. All Bob/Milford was doing was sitting in Jerry’s
chair. Anyway, the subtle violence – he really didn’t put weight on it, but simply tossed Milford from the chair to the floor, all captured on Nurse Ratched’s
nuthouse video cameras – was enough to get Jerry tossed.
The only relative to step in, because he didn’t want Jerry
to be institutionalized in the state facilities or elsewhere, was Steven.
I caught up with Steven today, as he was working a construction
site in Franklin. He told me about his own health woes, mostly that he’s
ignoring to take care of Jerry.
“Jerry’s doing OK,” said Steven. “Problem may come tomorrow,
when we go to his kidney doctor.
“They probably will put him on dialysis, which will complicate
what I do,” he said.
“His kidneys are really bad though, so it might help. All of
the toxins from the bad kidneys may be what has contributed to the fog.”
I remember times, in the 1970s, 1980s and even into the 1990s when Jerry was my invincible sidekick. We would laugh and drink all night and put out great newspapers when we were more-or-less sober. It was really a rock 'n' roll lifestyle, and we loved it.
He was one of the four main News Brothers, good journalists who gave their souls to newspapers that eventually kicked them to the curb. None of us -- Jerry, Rob "Death" Dollar, Jim "Flash" Lindgren or me "Flapjacks" are as spry as we were 40-very-odd years ago. Another beloved fellow who joined us in our jousts with korporate Nazis was Scott "Badger" Shelton. He died 13 years ago of cancer.
Jerry was a great newspaperman, especially when it came to
line-editing and headline writing.
Now he sits in his house in Lewisburg with his kidneys
failing and the world a confusing fog.
Well, actually, he and I sat in our houses in a confusing
fog on many days and nights when we were younger, back when I had a great back and
Jerry was lucid and had good kidneys.
Welcome to life after leaving the fast lane.
