Author : Randy Viosca

Louis and I are hanging out with dad’s cousin Vic’s family at their home. We’re all sitting around the kitchen table, talking about dad, and how funny he was. Lou comes up with this ditty that had us all dying with laughter:

“It’s like late spring or summer of 1979. Me and some high school friends are hanging out after school at my house. Dads in the kitchen marinating steaks, getting them ready for the grill. We kids are in the den, sitting around the TV, watching the video tape “Faces of Death”. It’s a gruesomely narrated documentary of accidents, and people dying. The film is near the end and there’s a scene with a rocket car jumping over a canyon. Midflight, it disintegrates. the wreckage and driver plunge to the river below. The announcer says, “… he was lucky to have only a broken back.” Dads in the kitchen listening in and is snickering. Walking past the den to check on the grill he looks in and says, “How can anybody be ‘lucky’ to have a broken back?” Everybody’s laughing.

Soon the video ends, and we kids are sitting there trying figure out the best way to die.

My friend Paul D. says, “I wanna get run over by a freight train because it’ll be quick!”

Dads laughing in the kitchen.

My friend John K. says, “I wanna fall into an electrical transformer!”

Dads laughing harder in the kitchen.

I say, “I wanna get sucked out an airplane window and into the jet turbine – instantaneously vaporized!”

Dads roaring with laughter, and poking his head into the den says, “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m dying of old age!”

Robert Raymond Viosca “Bob” born 26 Oct. 1925 in New Orleans, died 26 Feb. 2022 at his home in Mandeville Louisiana. On the way to bed, he collapsed suddenly in the arms of his son Randy.

He was the third child of Felix Viosca and Alice Baudean, and was the last of his family. His three siblings, parents, and wife preceded him: Randall Clement Viosca (1944 England WW II), Felicie “Fay” Rita Viosca Martin (2010 Mandeville LA), and Jerome Felix “Jerry” Viosca (2001 Simi Valley CA), mother Alice Baudean (1987 Mandeville), father Felix Viosca (1947 New Orleans), and Bob’s wife Phyllis Freshwater (2001 Hamel MN). He is survived by sons: Randy Viosca (Cari Giroir, Katie and Joseph) and Louis Viosca (Juliet Maxson Viosca), granddaughter Kayla Sandelin (Dayne) and three great-grandchildren (Reikah, Winston, Bowie), adopted family friends Julie Hoff, Ron Latin, and Cyndee Jackson, nephews Danny Martin (Karen), and Justin Viosca, nieces Tammie, Bonnie, Kim, Tara, and cousin and best friend Vic Viosca (Dionne) whose family adopted Bob when he retired to Mandeville.

Bob was 14 when he graduated Warren Easton high school in New Orleans. His mother Alice taught him how to cook her New Orleans French family recipes so he could make the family meals while they were working and he was at night school. During World War II he enlisted in the Army Air Corps 1943. In basic training he washed and warmed up aircraft in Denver. Just prior to shipping out to flight training he stumbled in a doorway in front of a doctor who diagnosed him with Rheumatic fever. He was quarantined for six months in a hospital bed where he used the time to memorize “The Rubáiyát” by Omar Khayyám, which lines he would recite at any appropriate moment (or not, depending on the wine), much to the chagrin of his wife. He called it his “Red Boat” philosophy.

After the war he attended Tulane University on the G.I. bill, and graduated 1950 as a Mechanical Engineer. He was accepted into Harvard Business School where he earned his MBA 1954. During college he took an internship with Westinghouse where he, with a nearly unlimited expense budget, smoothed the ruffled feathers of worldwide executives in the power industry who were upset that their shipments of generators, transformers, turbines, and other equipment were reconsigned during the defense production act of 1950 for atomic projects.

After college he and some buddies sublet a factory loft apartment from an artist in Greenwich Village where he created his first oil painting “The Hangover” – 1955. It was the beatnik age – and he loved the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. One can imagine he and his buddies standing around with martinis critiquing his masterpiece.

He took a job in marketing and manufacturing with Etna Bearing and Nuttel Gear in Pittsburgh where he guided the design of the Moduline adaptable gear sets (still sold today).

Bob met the love of his life, Phyllis Freshwater, an aspiring opera singer and music student, in the laundry room of their Pittsburgh apartment building. She invited him over for lasagna, but she didn’t know to precook the pasta, “and it came out like a concrete cinder block.” He took her to his favorite Lebanese restaurant, Samrini’s, where she had lamb for the first time. He proposed to her, and she refused. He proposed multiple times, and finally he did a full corporate presentation to her with charts, graphs, and bullet points, detailing how he would be supportive of her career, education, and family. She accepted. They married in 1957 in Pittsburgh.

With his New Orleans background, he loved to cook and taught Phyllis. Together they raised two boys and relocated to cities including Mansfield OH, Chicago, Munich Germany, and the Twin Cities (Edina). In the 1960’s Bob got his pilot’s license and bought a Cessna.  For business, Bob traveled a lot, and took along a portable watercolor set he made. In the 1970’s, when their sons were finishing up high school, they started Avion Travel agency, a family business Phyllis and Louis ran. Bob and Phyllis traveled all over the world. In 1978 he started Video Entertainment Inc. in Minneapolis, which he and Randy grew to seven stores. In 1980’s Bob and Phyllis bought a small farm in Hamel MN and raised and trained horses for dressage and fox hunting. Bob was in the Long Lake Hounds fox hunting club.

After Phillis died in 2001, Bob built a home in 2003 in Mandeville LA. He liked to say, “I’m returning to my ancestral breeding grounds.” He made seasonal “painting junkets” to Europe and other places. He continued to study art and took classes with well-known contemporaries. He joined the Lacombe Art League. Never one to “rest on my bay leaves”, in his 80’s he checked out the book “Save The Cat!” from the Mandeville Library, and with Randy, they wrote three satiric comedy screenplays, the first which was presented to Paramount Studios. His lifetime painting body of work is some 500+ oil and watercolor paintings, and mixed media – many sold, given as gifts, or donated.

Many of his paintings, writings, and screenplays can be seen at his website: artbyviosca.com.

In the last year of his life, he often told caregivers and friends, “You know, I’ve really lived a charmed life, I couldn’t have asked for more.”

He was a unique man, some say renaissance. He was slow to anger, playfully irreverent, thoughtful, and empathetic – always striving to understand others’ views, even those he disagreed with.

His wishes were to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in Lake Pontchartrain at his favorite fishing spots. He didn’t want a solemn funeral but requested holding a crawfish boil for him at his home in his honor, and we’ll all do that when the mudbugs come in season this spring. As you can imagine, his exact wording was something rather irreverent, something you might find in one of his screenplays, writings, or paintings. And that was his way.

He touched many family members and friends in his life from all over the world. His passing leaves a vacancy in our hearts impossible to fill.

His art website: www.artbyviosca.com
The Viosca Family genealogy and historic photo website: www.viosca.com
His memorial on FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/237185341/robert-raymond-viosca
His entry on FamilySearch.org: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G3PR-3SH
His memorial at Bagnell Funeral Home: https://www.bagnellfuneralhome.com/obituary/Robert-Viosca

Getting dad ready in the morning is usually the most stressful time. What would normally take 45 minutes, he can drag out to 2.5 hours.
So one day a week I get a break as a home nursing assistant, Alicia, helps him shave, take a shower, dress his pressure sore, and get dressed and to the table.
Alicia doesn’t take any shit, and he knows it. Any alteration from the prescribed course of events is met with consistent and firm, but kind and gentle pressure. Resistance is futile. And, since a woman is involved, he’s all about dressing to impress. She gets him all done in 1/2 hour.

This morning I’m in the living room, secretly listening in as she works with him when I hear the walker starting to clatter quickly across the bathroom tile floor. He’s making a break for it. He’s escaping!

Dad (mumbling, making a beeline to the bed): I gotta get back inta bed, offa my feets.
Alicia: Ya can move fast when you wanna. Hold on! I’m right behind you!

He abruptly stops at the edge of the bed, casts the walker aside, turns around and with legs spread and hernia exposed to the world, plops down backwards onto the bed, naked, with legs in the air.

Dad (excitedly, motioning toward himself): Come on, I’m ready for ya!
Alicia (standing in bathroom doorway, lets out a short startled snort/laugh): Hmmfrff.
Dad (apologetically, embarrassed): I’m just joking!
Alicia (hand on hip, waiving finger at him, laughing): I know you are!

A section of land a block up the road from dad’s home has recently been cleared of old growth forest to make room for a new 16 home subdivision. We’re really sad to see the forest go, as we could walk to it from the house. Part of the land is on two corner lots where they’re widening the road and putting in a stop light. Previously there were ditches on either side that made making the turn precarious. In Mandeville, the city council and planners seem to hate sidewalks and love ditches. Dad’s sister used to call them the “sons of ditches”.

On this morning, as I’m driving dad to dialysis, there’s all sorts of big construction equipment digging around, ripping up road, and knocking big pine trees over.

Dad (disgustedly eyeing the carnage): Is that where they’re puttin’ up the new sewage waste treatment plant, or did they decide on a slaughter house, or perhaps a pig farm?
Randy: (laughing, carefully making turn to avoid the ditch, pointing to a now vacant lot): Yes! And right across the street here, they’re puttin’ in that new strip club!
Dad (grunting): Yes,… I can see the sign,… coming soon.

Sometime last summer, on way to dialysis, I ask the usual questions…

Randy (driving): Dad, have you pooped today?
Dad (indignantly): And, why do you need to know?
Randy: So we have an idea of your dry weight for dialysis!
Dad (drolly): Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay, I haven’t pooped today. Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay, I haven’t pooped today.

Dad has a lot of hardware in his heart, a valve (TAVR), numerous stents, and a pacemaker. So they have him on blood thinners to keep him from clotting everything up. This means that he bleeds really easily. He gets these pinhole bleeds that we have to slap band-aids on to keep from staining his clothes. As a dialysis patient this can be problematic, so they repeatedly train him on how to apply a tourniquet to his access arm, the arm they put the needles in.

Nurse (demonstrating how to put tourniquet on): So you apply the tourniquet by putting it around your arm and tightening it up. Then you go to the ER.
Bob (bored): Uh-huh.
Nurse (talking loudly): Bob! Are you paying attention?
Bob (irritated): Yes! If I’m bleeding I wrap a tourniquet on it.
Nurse (calmer): Yes. And?
Bob (disgruntled): I go to the ER.
Nurse: Yes. Now, have you had any bleeding?
Bob : From where?
Nurse (frustrated): From your access arm!
Bob : No!
Nurse (eyes narrowed): Are you bleeding somewhere else?
Bob (kind of embarrassed and gesturing down towards his hernia): Well, yes… I get these little pinhole bleeds on my scrotum. And since it’s hard to notice, it makes a real mess of my clothes.
Nurse (concerned, but unable to examine him on the public dialysis floor): I see. Is it bleeding now?
Bob (smirking): No. But I’m not quite sure how you’d want me to apply the tourniquet there!

The nurse is covering her eyes, shaking her head, laughing, and turning red.

Nurse (to Randy): Woo-wee, your father is something else.

Due to weight loss and from having to sit in a dialysis chair without out moving for four hours, three days per week, dad has developed pressure sores on his bum (sacrum or tailbone) that need to be treated. This involves cleaning the area with sterile saline, putting a drop of medical grade honey (Manuka)on any open lesions, rubbing zinc barrier cream on the surrounding area, and sticking a gel pad over the area to protect it from pressure. The honey burns a bit on the raw flesh.

Dad: Ouch, that stings!
Randy (rubbing the honey in well): Sorry, not much I can do about that. You need to remember the way this feels when you refuse to eat the protein rich meals I give you!
Dad: Protein, protein, protein, that’s all you say these days… Ouch!
Randy (frowning): Yep, just keeping ignoring the doctors, nurses, and dieticians ’cause you know better.
Dad: Okay, enough, enough! (farts) You can kiss my sweet honey ass.
Randy (annoyed): Just keep it up buster, and I’ll be mixing the whiskey from your nightly Old Fashioned in with the honey. That’ll night cap your ass!

We’ve just finished a doctor’s visit. The office is a few miles from Lake Pontchartrain, where dad kept his sailboat, from before he was married. We’re waiting for the after visit summary to print, and dad’s chatting-up the receptionist who’s trying to schedule a follow-up appointment.

Dad (crooning to receptionist): … and I liked sailin’ on moonlit nights. I’d take my dates out on the boat. It was like dynamitin’ fish.
Receptionist (trying not to laugh): Ok Mr. Bob, we want to see you again in a week. How about next Wednesday?
Randy (butting in): Well, he has dialysis on M-W-F, so Tuesday or Thursday would be best.
Receptionist (looking at computer): The doctor’s booked up Tuesday and Thursday, out about three weeks. What time does dialysis start so we can get him in before hand?
Randy: Ok, I’ll need a half hour to get there after, but his check-in time is 1 o’clock.
Dad (poking his head back into the reception window): And I’m a “wake up at the crack-of-noon” kinda guy!

Dad and I are driving to a doctor’s appointment. Spotify is playing a Beach Boys song, and dad has a confused look.

Dad (disgruntled): What’s this modern music crap. Sounds like cats screwin’.
Randy (disbelief): Dad! This is the Beach Boys. They’ve been around for 50 years or so!
Dad: Well, it’s new to me…
Randy (turning volume down): I can’t change it now as I’m driving. Better?
Dad (shaking head): Humpf… Why would anyone write a song about a little loose poop?

A few months back, when we were in New Orleans for the winter, Dad and I saw a surgeon to see what could be done about his inguinal hernia. After a cat-scan he’s sitting in the doctor’s office on the bench for a visual inspection. The doctor’s obviously impressed (and not in a good way) by its large cantaloupe volume and appearance. He’s cradling it in his gloved hands the way one might hold a large, over-filled, red water balloon, or perhaps a newborn infant.

Dr. (concerned): It’s very large! Does it hurt?
Dad (bored): No. But it’s uncomfortable, and difficult to pee.
Dr.: Can you still push it back in?
Dad (looking down at it): Yes. I can push “the monster” back into its lair, if I work at it.

(He starts rustling around down there trying to push it back in. There’s the sound of water sloshing about, like young lovers wrestling in a hot waterbed.)

Dad (proudly): There!
Dr. (somewhat amazed): That’s good! Because you probably wouldn’t survive the surgery to repair it. And if the blood flow to the intestines gets cut-off, they’ll become strangulated or incarcerated and you’ll end up in the hospital in a real-bad-way, and you wouldn’t survive the surgery to fix that either.
Dad (resigned): Well, I guess I’ll have ta try to keep this “blivit” tucked in.
Dr.: Yes, and I’d avoid exercise that puts a lot of stress on it, like jogging.
Dad (eye brows up, hopeful): Do you hear that Randy, no more exercise!
Randy (to Dr., hurriedly): What about his weekly physical therapy at the gym, and using his walker instead of the wheelchair, like the P.T. says?
Dr. (to both of us): The P.T. knows how to deal with hernias, and using the walker is fine, and probably better for you.
Dr. (to dad): What, exactly, is a “blivit?”
Dad (dejected, grumbling, eyes down): It’s from World War II, for when ya have too much of somethin ya don’t want. It means having “three pounds a shit in a two ounce bag.”
Dr. (chuckling): Yes, literally so.

We’re leaving the hospital where Dad has just finished his weekly paracentesis, a procedure where they drain about 3 liters of fluid from his his belly (ascites). He accumulates the fluid because his heart is in AFIB, the upper chamber is not beating in sync with the lower chamber (sinus rhythm), so the blood pressure to his liver is low and causes blood to pool there. The liver responds by shedding water and albumin, which bloats his belly and puts pressure on his stomach, heart, lungs, hernia, etc. For 3 or 4 days afterward he feels much better, can breathe, has an appetite, and his hernia shrinks.
This day, he has an appointment with his cardiologist about an hour afterwards. It’s near the hospital, so there isn’t time to drive home and back, and the Dr. can’t see us sooner. So we head over to Wendy’s to get him some chili. After we’ve eaten our lunches in the parking lot and we’re headed to our appointment, dad has a distressed look on his face.

Dad: I think I’m going to have to go, very soon.
Randy (driving faster): Hold on dad, we’re almost there, hang in there!

I pull up under the over-hang, slam it in park, race around the car, help him out, and hand him his walker. He’s moving that walker fast, I’m holding the lobby door open and I’m pointing to the women’s restroom because the men’s is occupied. He’s hesitating, he doesn’t want to use women’s. He’s aiming his walker back and forth between the doors. Suddenly the men’s door opens and an older gentleman with a walker slowly emerges, taking his time, he looks up, and sees the panicked look on dad’s face. An invisible line of communication passed between them, knowledge, understanding, and empathy. Then it was like two fast moving walkers passing in the night – click, shuffle, slide, repeat. Suddenly dad’s pants are down around his ankles, his hand is on the door latch, the door clicks open, and boom — too late.

I’m dancing around on tiptoes, assessing the situation, making big cleanup plans, formulating a strategy. I get dad parked on the porcelain and beg him to please just wait, don’t do anything, don’t try to clean up, please, please, just sit there.
Looking up, I see the lobby area near the restrooms has been vacated of patients who are now sitting far away along the opposite wall, with their masks in the upright and locked position. I calmly walk up to the receptionist, knock on the glass, and whisper, “Hi, I’m Randy Viosca, Bob Viosca’s son. We’re here for our 1:00 with Jeff, but we have a major bowel spill over by the men’s room, so if you have some cleaning supplies I’d really appreciate it.” She smiles and says, “Oh, ok. We’ll be right with you.” and slides the glass back shut.

I’m nervous as I have memories of a story dad tells about our family dog, a long haired Lhasa Apso, named Tiki. Whenever it was storming outside, she would keep everyone up all night howling. So dad put her and her doggy bed, in the closet. The next morning he went to let her out and he says what emerged was a 30 pound dingle berry.

I’d waited about a minute, which seemed like 20, and decided to tiptoe back to the restroom to check on dad, and mercifully he’s still parked. I feel a tapping on my shoulder, turn around, and there’s a nurse with cleaning supplies and biohazard bag. I thank her and reach for the supplies and she says, “No, no, no… don’t worry. I got this. I used to be a hospital nurse and know exactly how to do this.” Pointing she says, “You sit down over there!” She pokes her head into to the restroom, asks dad how he’s doing, sees he’s is okay, and tells him to stay put. She quickly cleans up the entrance, floor, door and walls, then goes in and cleans him up. They emerge about 10 minutes later, and he’s sporting new drawers and pants. She hands me the sealed up bio-bag with his clothes in it. I’m so grateful, I’m actually crying.

A few minutes later, the receptionist calls out “Mr. Bob, we’re ready for ya!” And we go off to the exam room. His nurse practitioner, Jeff, says he heard we had a little incident in the lobby. I told him that a really kind nurse helped us out. He asked who and I said I didn’t get her name, but she was shorter, black hair, and has cat-eye glasses. Jeff said, “Yes, that’s Jenny, she’s a hospital nurse.”

Dad and I are sitting on the porch with our evening drinks. He’s relaxed with eyes closed, and a grin on his mug.

Randy: What’s up dad?
Dad: What did the doctor name his new dog?
Randy (thinking): I donna know, Ivy Drip?
Dad: No! Phlebitis!

We’ve since modified the joke to: What did Dr. Drip name his daughter? Ans: Ivy. What did he name his dog? Phlebitis!

I’ve always known my father to be an Atheist.
He has been so, while still respectful of other’s beliefs.
When folks tried to convert him, his view was that they thought they were looking out for him, and, usually, there was no ill intent.

Randy: Dad, what do you believe happens after you die? Where do you go?
Dad (smugly): I believe you just return to the place you were before you were born.
Randy: Well, don’t you think that’s going to be uncomfortable for your parents?
Dad (smirking): Perhaps. It’s more like we return to the great void, infinite nothingness.
Randy: But…
Dad (interrupting, grinning): It’s like this. In other religions, people wear chains and trinkets as symbols of their gods. It’s kind of strange when you think of it. If Christ had died in the present day, folks would wear little gold electric chairs around their necks. If he had died in the old west, it would be nooses. For my belief, I’d wear a gold chain with a tiny vacuum bottle hanging from it.

I’m getting dad ready for bed and we have this routine. He’s sleeping in the bed with his clothes on and I wake him up.

Dad: Why ya waking me up? I was asleep!
Me: Because you’re in your street clothes, and you don’t want to wake up that way!
Dad (Grumbling): , Okay, okay, I guess you’re right. I gotta wash up. It fools me into thinking I’ve had a bath.

With walker in hand, he makes it to the toilet, a fancy computerized Japanese bidet with 10 different wash spray, dry, and wax cycles. Every time he hits a button on the remote control it beeps and I can hear the change in water pressure, aeriation, spray, and dryer. Then he makes his way to the sink where he perform the rest of the requisite cleaning steps, and then to the bed, where he installs himself into his pajamas. Then he lies back and hands me his glasses and hearing aids (in that order), which I dutifully place in prescribed places on his night stand. Lastly, he pulls up the sheets just enough to cover his feet just below the knees, and no more.

Dad: I gotta keep ’em covered, so I can find ’em in case I need ’em.”

When dining out, or going through the drive-thru, dad likes to order things that aren’t on the menu.

Dad: I’ll have the grilled groin of bandicoot on a crispy bed of wombat scrotum crisps with a side of marinated muskrat snout. I’ll also have the marsupial soup, or is the soft shell rabbit appetizer better?

Dad’s in the bathroom cleaning up in the sink, getting ready for bed. He’s inspecting his wrinkly, age worn body, covered with scars from various surgeries.

Dad (pointing at self): Do you know why men have nipples?
Randy (shaking head): Uh,… No.
Dad (smirking): Just in case.

I’m helping dad get ready for bed.

Dad: Do you smell that?
Randy (frowning) : What?
Dad: I farted!
Randy: Oh, didn’t notice.
Dad: We should get your hearing checked!

At a doctor’s appointment after the nurse was discussing the importance of him keeping his hernia tucked in.

Randy (to nurse): They’re ain’t nothing more likely to get your father to tuck his hernia back in than to offer to do it for him.
Dad: Agreed!

After dad graduated from Harvard Business School, one of his early jobs was a director in the marketing department of Westinghouse appliance division. So he has a wealth of knowledge about things like hair dryers, coffee makers, toasters, washing machines, and how they were marketed towards consumers in the 1960’s. Think “Madmen”.

We’re sitting in the living room. Dad’s in his recliner and we’re having a conversation about repurposing unused appliances, i.e. finding alternative uses.

Dad (lowering the foot rest): You know, we have a lot of appliances around here we never use.
Randy (worried where this is going): Uh-huh.
Dad: Well it seems like kind of a waste. We should find other uses for them.
Randy (relieved he not thinking of holding a garage sale): Well, since we buy pre-ground coffee, I suppose could use the coffee grinder for milling spices.
Dad: Right!
Dad (remembering): When I was at Westinghouse, we made refrigerators that’d last a lifetime. Now they make ’em to wear out in 10. Fridge sales were low as they lasted forever. So at a brainstorming meeting, to pick up sales, I proposed we put fittings on the side that handles could be attached to.
Randy (unsure): Un-huh?
Dad: Well that way when the housewife dies, you can attach the handles and bury her in the fridge. Much cheaper than coffins, and it generates sales!
Randy (nodding diagonally): Sure.
Dad: And if you ran the cord up and power to the grave, no need for embalming costs. “Keep your loved one cool and fresh for eternity!”
Randy (frowning): Um… if you bury a running fridge, It’ll overheat! It’d be more like a crockpot!
Dad (shaking head): No-No, not if the cooling fins are attached to the back of the headstone.
Randy (hand over eyes, laughing): Ok, how about things that are a bit more practical, that we can do around here?

Dad (pointing up): Well, that fancy Japanese bidet you bought me could also be marketed as a water-pik, or “oral cleansing station.”
Randy (smirking): Yes, quite refreshing.
Dad (remembering): It would be particularly useful after a jag, on hangover mornings.
Randy: Dad, somehow I can’t see ya getting down on your hands and knees in front of a toilet.
Dad (nodding): Well no…, but younger folks could. “We keep both ends clean!”, or “We’re a means to your ends!”, or “We keep both ends from burning!”
Randy (smug): So, it seems now that you, ahem…, like the bidet?
Dad: Well, yes, now that I’ve gotten used to it.
Randy: Well, ok then.

A few months back in NOLA, we’re in the living room. Dad’s in his recliner. The 24 hour news is recapping the latest urgent Covid news. Deaths are up 100%. Everyone should wear a mask. In Florida and Texas, no one should wear a mask. People should take Ivermectin. Only horses should take it. And hey, we know Iverectin. We wormed our horses with it, gave it to our dogs for heartworm, and we’d never take it. But crazy folks, who fear vaccines, swallow it right up. Wow!

Dad (shaking his head): Geeze, those fools, like lemmings are following their leaders right over the cliff. Maybe it’s nature’s way of culling the herd of the less intelligent.
Randy: Well, I don’t know about nature’s way, but it sure is bizarre.
Dad (depressed): This Covid news is all so glum. Why don’t you switch the channel over to something less depressing?
Randy (holding the remote): Ok dad. Any ideas?
Dad (cynically): How about the WW II channel on Netflix?

I’m working on my computer in my bedroom and I hear dad laughing and talking to someone in the living room. I’m up like a shot to make sure he’s wearing his mask and bumping elbows. He’s sitting in his recliner with his smartphone, “Ok Google, what are the origins of the word ‘Hemorrhoids’?”

Dad (during dinner): What do you suppose the mercenary position is?

It’s after 2AM, and the TV in the living room is still on with the volume cranked up on the WW II channel. Over the sound of machine guns, airplanes diving, and bombs exploding:

Randy (yelling to dozing father in recliner): How’s it going dad?
Dad: I’m just trying to work up the ambition to go to bed.

Dad, is slowly moving his walker up to the dialysis check-in desk.

Nurse: Hi Bob. Any Covid symptoms?
Bob: Other than the usual runny nose, muscle aches and pains, shortness of breath, diarrhea, loss of sleep… no.
Nurse: Okay. How are we doing now?
Bob: Well, I’m feeling rather spry.
Nurse: Oh? Good.
Bob: Yes, I’m thinking of turning over a new leaf!

Dad (sitting at dining room table, looking longingly at recliner): Jeez, I gotta get outta this chair so I can get offa my feets.

Dad’s out in the living room, in his recliner, grumbling about something.

Me: Ok dad, what’s your medical complaint of the day?
Dad (smirking): This hernia is driving me nuts!
Me: oh jeez.
Dad: The pain is gone, but the malady lingers on…

INT.  A DIALYSIS CENTER – DAY

Patients are situated about the room in large recliners and are hooked up to dialysis machines.

Dad, at dinner, waving a chicken drumstick about, “When I die, if I’m reincarnated, I think I’ll avoid coming back as a chicken, or an oyster.”

On my way to work, I’m talking with dad on the speaker phone.

DAD:
I had this crazy dream. I’m in the hospital. Another patient pulls me aside. He says he’s dying and wants to tell me a joke.
It is hilarious! I couldn’t stop laughing. Other folks in the hallway who overheard just bits of it are bending over too. When I tried to tell him how remarkably funny it was, and to thank him, I noticed he had died.
So I walked back to the waiting room, and on the way I passed by a room with a patient who was dying and in a lot of pain. So I walked in, squeezed past the doctors and nurses, picked up the man’s hand, and told him the joke.
Everyone was doubled over. The medical staff were in stitches. And the dying man was roaring the loudest! When the laughter calmed down, we notice the man had passed on. But his family members were hugging and thanking me for bringing so much happiness into the last moment of his life.
And that’s when I woke up!
RANDY:
Wow, that’s an unusual dream! What was the joke?
DAD:
That’s the crime of it. I can’t, for the life of me, remember it!

I’m talking with my dad on the phone. He’s talking about going to the store to get new sheets, because his are threadbare. But he’s not relishing the idea of moseying around Target.

Randy: Why don’t you just order them off of Amazon?
Dad: Well, I’ve sort of forgotten my password there.
Randy: Well there’s a password recovery feature where they’ll send you a link to reset it!
Dad (pauses a bit): I’m too lazy to use the labor saving device.

Dad, who got his pilot’s license in the 1960s, is coming out of the bathroom furiously flapping his clothes. Looking around to make sure his young house cleaner isn’t in sight, he whispers, “I wouldn’t go in there now, there’s a very strong tail wind!”

Dad is getting up early tomorrow morning to go fishing with a friend. So he picks up his phone and says, “Ok Google! Set my alarm for 6:15 am.”

Pretty good for a guy born in 1925!

Dad (in front yard, to his neighbors): If there’s a westerly wind and you smell something foul, call the coroner, as I must have passed!

Dad: If you fart, when you’re asleep, and you’re alone, does it make a sound?

Dad had an angiogram and stents put in this morning. He’s doing well. Coming to, he says to the nurses, “Oh, I think I just farted, and I’m afraid it came with baggage.”

I’m helping my dad, BOB, 92, organize his medications. He has two day-of-week organizers, morning and night, brimming with many colored pills of various shapes and sizes. From memory, he describes the chemicals and purpose of each (he reads all the fine print). Suddenly he has a smirk on his face. I ask him, “what’s up?” And he recounts a “discussion” between his sister FAY and mother, ALICE, when she was in her 90’s. Alice hadn’t been taking her prescribed medications:

FAY
“Mamma, you know you gotta do what the doctor says.”

ALICE
(uninterested)
“Uh-huh.”

FAY
(agitated)
“Mamma, you gotta take the medications to stay healthy!”

ALICE
(resigned)
“Sure.”

FAY
(hands up)
“Oh for gods sake! What am I gonna do with you?”

ALICE
(smirking)
“Well, you’ll just hafta put me up for adoption.”

And in that instant, I can see my grandmother in my dad.

Over the last year, dad has started a new behavior. Every once in a while it sounds like he’s doing a low rumble growl. So, last night while eating dinner:

Dad: grrr, rumble, rumble, chomp, chew…
Randy: Dad, what are you doing?
Dad: What?
Randy (louder): What are you doing? Are you in pain?
Dad: No. I’m eating! Why?
Randy: Well… you’re sort of grumbling, or growling. What’s it mean?
Dad (smugly, looking up with eyebrows raised): I’m purring.

Dad and I are having Christmas dinner at his cousin Vic and Dionne’s house.

Dad (while supping the oyster and artichoke dressing): A little known fact, Majorca is the artichoke capital of the world! And, by coincidence, also happens to be the place where the Heimlich maneuver was invented.

Dad and I are driving across the New Orleans causeway to visit his cousin Vic.

Dad (musingly): For whom the turnpike tolls.

Dad (to his physical therapist, she is also a yoga instructor): When you do your workout in the morning are you clothed, or do you do your yogi bear?

“When I ‘woke’ up this morning I felt terrible because I didn’t sleep a wink.” -Dad

My dad and I are discussing cognitive metaphor, how we think metaphorically, i.e. up, more, lightness are good, while down, less, and darkness are bad, and how this relates to political narrative. We’re noticing that not all “up” cases are necessarily good, as in “up yours”, and “shove it up your ass”.

Randy: Well perhaps it’s because our digestive systems are vertically oriented.
Dad: There’s also up shit creek, without a paddle.
Randy: I’m with you there dad, ‘down’ the creek would be worse.
Dad: Yes, where the volume flow rate is greater. Perhaps “at the mouth of shit creek,” where Donald Trump lives.

Out shopping with dad, I pull into the parking lot, and by habit, I drive past the handicap/senior spots. With a smirk, pointing at the spots, he says, “Hey wait, why don’t you park in the short term parking.”

So dad’s cousin Vic is showing us all how his android phone can can look up words from his voice.

Vic (to phone): Ok google, ‘Juachin’.

Vic then looks up at us all watching him.

Vic (to us): Jeeze you guys must think I look silly talking to my hand.
Phone (Google responds):  Used as a contemptuous way of dismissing what someone has said (often accompanied by a gesture in which the palm of the hand is held in front of the original speaker’s face). “talk to the hand, girl, ‘cos the face ain’t listening”.

I call my father and this is how the conversation starts:

Dad: Hello?
Randy: Hi pops, how ya doin?
Dad: Huh?
Randy: (loudly) I said, how…
Dad: Hold on a sec, gotta find my hearin’ aids.

(Lots of commotion in background followed by sound of him sitting back in the recliner, poof!)

Dad: Okay, I can hear now! Who dat?
Randy: It’s me, how…
Dad: Just a sec I’ll be right back…

(more commotion, kitchen cupboard doors slamming, drawers slamming, recliner poof!)

Randy: Jeeze pops, that’s a lot of ruckus going on there! What was that all about?
Dad: Oh, I just had to look in a few more spots, so I didn’t find ’em in the last place I looked.

Bob, on being labeled a “controversial” artist for his political paintings like “Frack, Baby, Frack”:

When fame is elusive, settle for notoriety!

I’m standing in line at Radio Shack in Mandeville, waiting to buy a camera flash to USB converter for dad’s camera. The flash is full and he can’t take any more pictures, so I need to upload them to his computer. Behind me an excited Harley biker dude in leather chaps decides that I’m the one he’s going to share his new pickup line with:

Biker (taps me on shoulder, and with a very Cajun accent): So ya walk up to her and say, “Ever kiss a parrot?”
Me: No… I can’t say that I have.
Biker: Well you look like you’ve kissed a Cockatoo.
Biker (whispering): But you only say it to the ladies.
Me (uncomfortably): Ah. Okay then. I’ll keep that in mind.

A number of years back, the 1986 movie “Stand By Me”, made popular the sport mailbox baseball, where kids drive around in a convertible taking out mailboxes with a baseball bat. So one of dad’s neighbors, tired of repairing his designer mailbox, who was an executive for the power company, and who lived a mile or so up the road, had the brilliant idea of installing a gigawatt lamp across the street facing my parents home. So started the great Hamel Minnesota lighting feud.

I remember one thanksgiving when family and friends were gathered at my parent’s house. We were all seated at the candle lit dining room table. Dad was in his fox hunting coat, sitting at the head, looking out over the grand expanse of his front yard. The wine had been flowing. The sun had just set. The turkey carcass was making it’s last rounds and was nearly bones. And mom was feeding a hound, Elvis, scraps under the table. From the road, over a football field away, there was flickering light that got brighter. Looking at dad you could see shadows forming from the window panes across him and the wall behind.

He was up in a flash, stopping only briefly at the coat closet. From the window we could see his silhouette as he trotted down the driveway into the light. A distant shot rang out, and the light on the wall turned green. More shots and our faces were orange, and then the light fizzled.

Returning to the house, he stowed the shotgun in the closet, smugly sat back down, and resumed dining. Elvis was rolling around on his back under the table as some guests pet him with their stocking feet. Except for the sound of clicking plates and silverware, it was quiet for a few minutes, and then a guest raised his glass and called a toast, “To the night!”

INT: Day – Bob’s living room.
We’re sitting around his coffee table. Pages, notes, and the storyboard for his comedy screenplay are strewn about. Bob is in his recliner, and I’m on the couch.

BOB (working a crossword):
We need to figure out how Juan is going to try to kill Tom from a distance, because Tom is still in Haiti getting his voodoo erectile dysfunction cure from Dr. Quackoir.
RANDY (sifting through papers on the coffee table):
Is that the scene where the Doctor sacrifices a goat? Because to cure ED, Shouldn’t there be a horse involved. That way later on, in the sex scene with Maxine, Tom can whinny.
BOB (smirking):
Well, no, I don’t think there’s an animal sacrificed. That’s later. But how about a donkey.
RANDY (annoyed):
Do you want Tom to bray in the sex scene? How about a tiger? Then he could roar. Although, people might get upset about tigers getting killed for their penises.
BOB:
Well, we could say Dr. Quackoir uses only “Free Range” tiger penis.
RANDY (hands up):
Okay, Okay. I’m sure that PETA people will be much happier with that distinction.
BOB (puts crossword down):
Anyway, I was thinking that Juan could hijack a drone and send it to Haiti to kill Tom.
RANDY:
But how does dying from a drone attack cause Tom to die from ED or a urological problem?
BOB (scratches head):
Yes, that’s the problem with the drone approach. Too much collateral damage.
RANDY:
How about a bomb, perhaps in a toilet? Is that close enough to urological?
BOB:
Yes, but, how would Juan, in the US, plant a bomb in a Haitian toilet, lure Tom there, and trigger it remotely from the US?
RANDY:
Umm… Could you have Tom wearing Depends? That way you could have Juan plant an explosive in the diaper. Juan could send Tom a box of depends as a going away present.

(INSERT: party scene with Tom opening a box of gift wrapped Depends brand diapers.)

BOB (eyes widen):
That’s interesting — a diaper bomb, an Improvised Explosive Depends — IED.

Bob leans forward in his recliner and re-arranges his pants, and then nestles back comfortably.

BOB (Cont’d) (looking over his glasses):
How would Juan trigger it?
RANDY (gesturing with hands):
The explosives could be tied to a Bluetooth transceiver linked to Tom’s phone.

(INSERT: padded diaper laced with C-4, blinking LEDs, and a chip with the Bluetooth symbol on it.)

RANDY (Cont’d):
Juan would then just need to call Tom’s phone, pair the diaper to the phone, and enter a code to detonate the diaper.
BOB:
And how does Dr. Quackoir save Tom then.
RANDY (gesturing):
Well, as Juan makes the call to detonate, but before he enters the code, Dr. Quackior puts the pin in the voodoo doll’s groin. And, just as you currently have, the husband of Juan’s lover enters and shoots Juan in the groin. Now, however, as Juan feebly tries to protect himself from the shot with his iphone, it is destroyed. We make it an iphone so it’s smaller, offers less protection, and only Apple people are offended.

Randy stands up and takes his phone from his pocket.

RANDY (Cont’d) (pointing at phone):
Yet another reason to insist only on Android smart phones with gorilla glass!

Dad’s sitting in his recliner in the living room and he’s preoccupied with some loose threads that are hanging from the corner of his shirt pocket. He’s getting frustrated.

Dad (annoyed): Could you grab me a pair of scissors?

I get up and start hunting them down. Can’t find them in the kitchen junk drawer, so I head to his art studio. Not in any of the junk drawers there either. Heading back into the living room…

Randy: Dad, where do you keep the scissors?
Bob: Who?
Randy (louder): Where do you keep the scissors?
Bob: Huh?
Randy (yelling): Dad! Are your hearing aids in?
Bob: Yes! What do you want?
Randy (pause): … Um, I forgot, shit.
Bob: Say, could you find the scissors for me?

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Years ago, in New Orleans, in the early 1930’s, my aunt Fay had an impatient conversation with her aunt Thelma Louise. Fay was probably ten at the time. Thelma was in a hurry getting dressed up, and Fay was asking where she was going, and Thelma kept saying “I feed ’em, and I’m gonna go.” Fay didn’t think she was hearing properly and kept asking, and Thelma kept impatiently repeating it, “I feed ’em, and I’m gonna go!”

Fay went home, and her mom, Grandma Alice, who saw Thelma Louise all dressed up, and leaving, asked Fay, “Where’s Thelma goin’ Honey?” And Fay said, “I don’t know mama, she wouldn’t tell me. Whenever I asked her she just kept saying, “I feed ’em, and I’m gonna go!””

So a year ago, in 2010, Fay tells this story to my father, Bob. And over coffee, the two of them Google bits and peices it on the internet. They figure out Aunt Thelma was on her way to the opera, and what she was really trying to tell Fay, over 75 years ago, was that she was going to the opera “La fille de Madame Angot.”

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=&ie=UTF-8&text=La+fille+de+Madame+Angot&sl=fr&tl=en#

My father, Bob, was born in 1925 and lives in Mandeville, Louisiana, a small town north of New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain, about 24 minutes on the causeway the longest bridge in the world. Bob does pretty well for his age; he still goes fishing in his boat on the lake, the Rigolets, Lake Borgne, and the brackish water passes that connect Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico. These same waterways caused no end of troubles for the British in the war of 1812 and the battle of New Orleans, but Bob fires up his GPS and navigates his way.

That’s not bad for a man born before the great depression. Unfortunately his hearing isn’t what it used to be. Dad’s refrigerator freezer is mostly filled up with fish from all his expeditions. He catches lots of red fish, drum, croakers, flounder, and sheepshead, nets crab, and loves to give it all away to visiting friends and relatives who smuggle it in their bags for cross country flights, probably to the annoyance of the luggage inspecting TSA.

When he hasn’t had guests for a while, the freezer compartments get awfully tight with all those frozen fish packed in ziplock baggies. So when he’s in there digging around for the ice cream he can’t hear the loud ruckus he’s making as those frozen packages are jostling about in his quest. Nor does he hear it when a berg of sheepshead falls out and skitters between his legs, across the tile floor into the open pantry, nestling quietly in among the bags of potatoes, rice and flour, the Zatarains, and the mirliton.

About a month goes by and Bob starts thinking somethings gone wrong with his nose, like he’s got a bad sinus infection. But eventually he figures out that he doesn’t smell it by the boat in the garage, and it’s strongest in the kitchen. Then, after falsely accusing the refrigerator and throwing out half his food, he discovers a spoiled gumbo brewing in his pantry. So he wraps it up nicely and gives it to the garbage man.

L-R: Felix Jerome Viosca, Felicie Fay Viosca, Randall Clement Viosca, Alice Helene Baudean Viosca, Robert Raymond Viosca, and Felicie Rolle Baudean (Alice’s mother). Camera probably facing northwest across Chef Menteur pass. The old iron bridge is no longer there.

Many of the unspoiled New Orleans recipes Bob cooks came from his mother, Alice Baudean. When he was going to Tulane night school after leaving the army, post World War II, he used to cook the family meals with Alice while he studied at home during the day. So he learned many of her recipes for things like New Orleans seafood and chicken gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp and crawfish étouffée, crawfish bisque, stuffed crabs, oyster patties, and oyster dressing. Alice learned many of her recipes from her mother, Felicie Rolle Baudean. And that’s as far back as Bob knows.

Bob’s tips for modifying most gumbo recipes to make them great:

1. Brown all ingredients separately and deglaze with water and dump ingredients and deglazed liquids into the gumbo stock pot (you are in effect cleaning the pan with water and dumping the water into the stock pot).
2. Browned chicken thighs and their deglazings can be added as they make a nice base.
3. After cleaning the shrimp, make a stock from the shells, throw the shells away, and add the liquid to the stock pot. Optionally brown the shells first before making the stock.
4. Brown the shrimp, add deglazings to the stockpot but keep shrimp aside to add when gumbo is near done simmering (shrimp is fragile and will fall apart if simmered for too long so add later).
5. Lightly brown the okra but throw the deglazings away (browned okra is bitter and ruins the gumbo), add last before simmering.
6. Make a medium dark roux and add it last before simmering. The roux can be done with the vegetables or separately. Bob prefers separately as the darkness can be better controlled.
7. If, after the gumbo is done simmering, it doesn’t come out dark enough, a very dark roux can be added. In a pinch, Alice used to add some left over thick dark chicory coffee to darken it.

Bon Appetit