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Shock Treatment

The Source

I was cruising Community Park a couple of weeks ago with a young man who although he grew up in the area, had never actually driven inside the park. He was fascinated by the place and astounded at the sheer number of buildings on the grounds of what used to me the State Mental Hospital. He asked me, “Did they give shock treatments in these buildings?” I’m no expert on such matters but I guessed with him that such was probably the case since electroconvulsive therapy (the correct term) is still used in some cases but it’s not the Frankenstein-ian ordeal of the movies. Somehow our conversation got onto times when we’d been shocked. My friend still remembered a high school science lab experiment in which he’d been told to not touch the electrodes but couldn’t resist. I related to him the age-old trick of having your city cousin pee on an electric fence and watching his eyeballs make circuits around his head. But it got me to thinking of some of the major shocks of my life. One came easily to mind and her name was Joan. She married a cousin of mine and we thought her a good fit for my cousin’s wit, intelligence and ambition. We felt so comfortable around Joan until that Christmas dinner when she chose to unwrap herself and let her baby breastfeed at the table. There were no clever hide-a-breast covers in those days some twenty-five years ago, and most women left the room to nourish the little one, but not Joan. Nope. Hold it! Lest any feminists are now preparing to climb up my back, let me say that a woman has a perfect right to do this. It’s just that the rest of us might need. . .well. . . a little warning. Breastfeeding at a Christmas table full of Presbyterians can be a dangerous thing. . . not to the mother or the baby, but Uncle Jack who is in the process of swallowing a bite of turkey or five-year-old David who might bruise his chin when it hits the floor. Bottom line: it was a shock that still sends reverberations through our conservative Midwestern family. I spend some of my summertime cruising up and down the Illinois River on the Spirit of Peoria paddleboat. It’s a sweet gig. You meet the nicest people and on a boat the scenery is always changing. . . the one exception being the time I wished I could change the scenery but couldn’t. Our boat guests stay overnight in places like the Starved Rock and Pere Marquette lodges or the Abe Lincoln Hotel in Springfield. Our gang of three entertainers always accompany them to the hotel and we’re thus available all night long to shuffle luggage around or explain to a Hungarian guest that the little plastic card in his hand is actually the room key. However, while we lounge around in the lap of luxury at the various inns and hotels, our ship’s crew sleeps on the boat. Someone has to protect the ship from pirates at such dangerous ports as Naples and Grafton. They unfurl their bedrolls and make themselves at home on one of the three decks. Most tend to sleep very near the bar. I guess it’s warmer there. The boat has everything the crew needs for an overnight stay including a fully stocked kitchen and a shower just under the pilothouse. When we dock at Starved Rock, the procedure is always the same. My friends Barry and Brian take the able-bodied hikers on a guided tour of Starved Rock itself while I hang around the lodge to shuffle the remaining guests onto an awaiting trolley or two which takes us to the boat waiting for us on the banks of the Illinois River. The crew is already lined up in their spiffy red shirts, ready to welcome the passengers back aboard. This is how it usually works. But on one July morning the captain asked if I’d take two elderly Canadian ladies down to the boat early. They had trouble navigating the steps on the boat’s three decks and had asked to board before the hoard arrived. I gladly helped them into our captain’s van and headed to the boat dock. I first saw Harold when I turned the final corner into the picnic area. Harold was one of the boat’s captains and he looked like a boat captain. . . six feet tall, pushing 300 pounds, and sporting a huge black beard. On this summer morning that’s all he was sporting as he stood on the top deck to greet the day, fresh from the shower and as unhindered by clothing as the day he was born. Had the two ladies seen him yet? Dare I honk my horn to warn him that I had passengers with me? Would the Medicare system of Canada cover heart attacks suffered while outside the country? To this day I don’t know whether Harold spied us in time or whether the ladies got a gander of everything Harold had to offer before he dashed into the souvenir shop on the third deck. I know that the two ladies stopped chatting for a bit and that Harold didn’t come out of the pilothouse for the rest of the trip.