Today we went for a walk on the Terry Trueblood Trail. It’s been a while because we’ve been pretty busy doing a lot of things that take up a lot of time but are not so much fun. I had nearly forgotten how relaxing it can be to just do a simple thing like go for a walk and experience nature.
Afterward, Sena wanted to go shopping for rocks. That’s right, we paid money for rocks. They were for the garden. The whole trip today reminded me of Stephen Covey’s story about putting in the big rocks first. It’s about putting the important things first in your life. At certain stages in my life, that has been difficult. It’s a good thing we get reminders now and then to put the big rocks in first.
As the yard waste collection worker approached our small, neat bundles of small tree branches tied up with twine, he just shook his head. He and his partner picked them up by the twine and tossed them in the truck. For a moment, I was afraid they would refuse to collect these relatively tiny remnants of the most devastating inland hurricane to smash Iowa in over a decade. It’s known as a derecho, which is Spanish for “straight line.” It refers to the straight-line winds which were clocked at well over 100 miles per hour on August 10, 2020.
The governor has requested federal aid. People died, many were injured, left homeless, and without power or means of communication for days which is extending to over a week now. Crops were ruined.
Trees and homes were ripped apart and scattered over the land. We knew when it ended that the cleanup job would be unimaginably hard. So that made the requirement to make tidy bundles of twigs festooned with twine all the more surreal. We and neighbors stacked the tree debris as neatly as we could in separate piles, never doubting that the city would understand that we were caught short. We just didn’t have time to stock up on twine in anticipation of a derecho.
The piles were left and so we thought, that’s understandable. The city was caught short as well. Then we heard that the reason they were left was that the bundles were not gift-wrapped.
So, we wrapped them up. It turns out it made the difference between allowing the piles of twigs to sit there and rot the grass underneath—or getting them collected.
It reminds me of a line from the movie Men in Black 2 in which the neurolyzed Agent K as the punctilious postmaster gently scolds a customer for failing to submit a “properly wrapped” parcel— “Brown paper and triple twist twine are the preferred media; thank you for your time.”
On August 10, 2020, the wind screamed like I’ve never heard it before. I made several trips to the basement in anticipation of a tornado, but we got something just as terrifying—the derecho. The power was off for a little over a couple of days. It took about a week before I got cell phone and internet access back. Thankfully, we were not injured and we had a roof over our heads.
Later in the week, we saw a long line of cars outside of a local hardware store—people waiting to buy $700 generators. Later that same afternoon, the power came back on. They’ll be ready next time.
Right after the storm stopped, I went out to get our mail (yes, the post person was out, believe it or not!). My jaw dropped when I noticed the fallen Maple tree in our front yard. We were lucky it didn’t fall on our house. I didn’t have a chainsaw. I cut it up with a 20-inch handsaw. My wife and I trimmed and stacked the remnants in our driveway. I didn’t think of triple twist twine at the time.
The last derecho I remember in Iowa was the Corn Belt derecho in 1998. I was an Assistant Professor in the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics Psychiatry Department. I remember pulling a tree branch off the roof of the house my wife and I had recently purchased. The streets were full of downed trees and in some cases were impassable. One of my colleagues called it a straight-line windstorm, the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing. I hoped I would never see such devastation again.
On the other hand, Iowans will make a straight-line comeback.
It never occurred to me that my smartphone (an iPhone 6) might be damaged. I thought the Otterbox case was just getting old and stretching out of shape. A guy asked me if my phone was bent and I told him that it was just the cover getting stretched. He looked at me with a doubtful expression.
Looking back on it, I suspect the real problem had been growing (literally) for at least several months. I noticed that the case was starting to crack, so a few days ago, I simply removed it.
The screen of my smartphone had separated along the sides by several millimeters—enough to peek inside and see a long rectangular black shape. That turned out to be the very swollen battery. I had no idea the battery was rectangular and took up much of the middle space of the inside of the phone.
In fact, it was rapidly taking up more space by the day. The long sides of the touchscreen were completely separated from the back and it was secured only by the top and bottom ends—barely. The phone worked fine, though.
I first bought the phone five years ago, at the urging of my residents. I had only just got a flip phone several years before. By the way, I just retired from my position as a consulting psychiatrist at an academic medical center.
I remember the day I got the smartphone in the store. I bought the Otterback case and clip so I could carry it on my belt and, uncharacteristically had filled out the warranty card for both. The phone has not been out of the case since then.
One of the residents created a picture of me and a smartphone in a setting from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The point was my awkwardness with modern technology. Little did I know that the black monolith would eventually come to signify so much more later—in the form of a long black battery that would go bad, eventually warp my phone and possibly even explode. It reminds me of the bowling alley scene in Men in Black 3 in which young Agent K holds a large phone to his ear while Agent J warns “Don’t put that up to your head!”
Anyway, I took it to a cell phone store, thinking I would have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new phone. I must have made a singular impression on the salesman. Because of the pandemic, he was wearing a mask and I was wearing a shield so he could see my facial expressions as well as my white hair as I moaned and groaned about the high cost of cell phone plans and phones. Maybe out of sympathy, but probably also partly because of a desire to get me out of the store away from listening customers, he recommended CPR. That’s not cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It’s short for Cell Phone Repair and their little shop was right around the corner within walking distance.
I wasted no time and the guys there were very helpful, quickly diagnosed the problem as a swollen black monolith battery, donned Explosive Ordnance Disposal suits, and applied the fix. They replaced the bad battery, squeezed my phone back together and it took less than an hour. They charged me $60, which was a far cry better than the $600 I had initially thought I was going to have to give up.
They also urged me to claim the warranty on my Otterbox equipment instead of charging me $50 for what they carry in their store. They assured me that Otterbox would likely honor the warranty. In fact, Otterbox charged shipping only and tracking information indicates delivery will be tomorrow.
I’m nearly bent back into shape.
ADDENDUM : Actually, Otterbox even cancelled the shipping charge. Delivered, assembled, and back on my belt before 1PM 8/7/2020. I definitely recommend Cell Phone Repair.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 