Exciting challenge of the blank page

     A blank page has always been an exciting challenge since I was a small boy writing stories at a corner table in my grandparents' restaurant.
     My mother bought me hard cover, 6-by-9-inch binders with blank pages at the Five and Dime Store.  I would painstakingly line each page using a ruler, think of a title and begin to write.  About what I only vaguely remember.
     Stories ended when I ran out of pages.  I always printed on the inside back cover: This book hand-written by Carlton E. Spitzer.  Otherwise, how would anyone have guessed?
     I know I wrote about Joey Bladdems and Billy Mumps, characters my brother Bob and I dreamed up in the back bedroom we shared.  We'd concoct wild adventures for our heroes, much like the never-ending Saturday afternoon serials at movie theatres: Bladdems and Mumps lurching from one catastrophe to another until dad came to the door insisting we cease the chatter and go to sleep.
     I have no idea how we dreamed up those names.  Later, when Bob moved to the front bedroom to bunk with big brother Rich, and younger brother Alan took his place, Alan and I dreamed up adventures for Carbarnhamaslog, an airplane mechanic in a movie serial about flying.
     Memories are indelible.  Twenty years ago, Alan gave me a Carbarnhamaslog T-Shirt.  I still wear it at family picnics.
     Some of the stories I composed at grandma's corner table featured visitors to the restaurant.  Mr. Simon, the wrestler, showed my dad various holds and maneuvers employed within the squared circle.  A devoted fan of Ed Don George, Jim Londos, and other wrestling greats of the day, dad thoroughly enjoyed details of Simon's exploits.  Mostly defeats, one surmised.
     I wrote about men who knocked gently at the side entrance, hats in hand, heads bowed, seeking a meal in the midst of the depression.  Grandpa would grumble, pulling on his handlebar mustache as he opened the door and ushered the guest to a table.  Grandma would already be in the kitchen filling a plate with the same delicious meal our family had enjoyed in the large back room.  Only later in life did I fully appreciate lessons my grandparents' taught about compassion and sharing what one has with those in need, without question.
     I hadn't known my mother saved those story-filled binders, written before I was twelve, until the day my dear dad, cleaning out files from an old dresser drawer in the basement in preparation for converting the ancient coal furnace to oil heat, casually tossed them out.
     Bob used to kid me that I never wrote better than at grandma's table and likely lost a best-seller to the garbage collector.  But my mother's beautiful whistling of Cole Porter tunes was silenced for days after those binders disappeared.  One knew when my mother was displeased.
     My dad, a friendly, fun-loving man, came to America in January, 1905 from Austria-Hungary with his parents, older sister, Jenny, and younger brother, Albert.  He met my mother, Margaret Carney, an Irish Catholic girl from Lewiston, New York, at Niagara Falls.  Their marriage in 1914 produced four sons.  Mother died in May, 1974, four months before their 60th wedding anniversary.  Brother Bob died much too young in June, 1977.  Dad died in October, 1982, on the eve of a big party in his honor.  Rich is going strong, having celebrated his 95th birthday on Cape Cod in March.  Kid brother Alan is just eighty-three. 
     One writes from their own experiences, about people and events that shaped their thinking, influenced their choices, brought joy or sadness, engendered admiration or disdain. 
     My life has taken many interesting turns, very few of my own design.  Good fortune has shined where darkness might have prevailed.  I have written on disability issues for a half-century, inspired by men and women of enormous courage and resolve who refused to let severe disabilities become handicaps.  Knowing them has been a great joy and privilege.
     Circumstance brought me to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the midst of school and hospital desegregation, Medicare's start-up and the inaugural of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s.  In the 1980s I had the opportunity to work with Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
     My columns over many years reflect concern for racial harmony and disability rights, and adequate funding to help disabled persons receive rehabilitation, obtain decent housing, enter the workplace and assimilate into the mainstream of society.  Reducing stigma is an ongoing effort.
     The blank page is still an exciting challenge, a pleasant one when ideas bubble up or one meets a fascinating person whose life story should be told.   One can't wait to put words on paper - or a computer screen.  In truth, I love the blank page now as much as I did as a boy.  A blank page begs one to tell a story, report an event, or write to a friend.   I am compelled to fill it with my opinions, throughts and dreams.  And unlike the binders I used at grandma's corner table in the 1930s, I don't have to line pages.

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Carlton E. Spitzer