Month: May 2023

Memorial Day is the American holiday that honors service members who have died in military service to the nation.  There are parades, testimonials and many events that pay rightful tributes to our brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  Besides all of these honors, folks take time off from work to enjoy ballgames, barbecues, weekend trips and other forms of leisure that come with our freedom.

As much as I enjoy the extra day off, the whole Memorial Day weekend brings back a difficult memory for me.  It happened thirty years ago, back in 1993.

A week before the holiday, my father Ken Kahler suffered a seizure while at a grocery store.  He was brought to the emergency room and given a quick once over before being released.  My dad was referred to a neurologist and had a full check-up appointment set for the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. 

Pop rarely got sick and my sister Mary, a long time nurse, took him to his check-up. He was to undergo a CAT-Scan and other tests to see what was going on. With her experience, Mary would be dad’s medical liaison and she sure shined in that role.  Dad appreciated her assistance.

I turned down a chance to go to a Cub game with friends that day because I sensed something serious may be happening.   Sadly, I was right.

Later that afternoon dad and Mary returned home and we waited for an update on the results.  Mary took the call from the doctor and my mom, dad and I waited in the living room.  The news was beyond awful.  Dad’s seizure was caused by a brain tumor that metastasized from his lungs.  It was called an Oat Cell Carcinoma.  It also spread to my father’s adrenal glands and it was terminal.

MANY YEARS AGO, THIS WAS MY DAD FEEDING ME.

This cancer was due to my father’s forty-year cigarette habit.  He quit smoking with nicotine patches a few months before this diagnosis but it was way too little and way too late.

Mary was calm yet had tears streaming down her face as she also shared that the longest our dad had to live was Christmas of 1993.  Maybe.  Dad had a stunned look on his face and mom and I were a puddle of sobs.   

The immediate plan was for dad to be hospitalized and undergo treatment for the next two weeks.  Chemotherapy did little to stave off the cancer and he came home just before Father’s Day.  Ken Kahler was resigned to the fact that his days were numbered and he was incredibly brave and together while we offered all the care and support possible. 

The amazing folks at Hospice of DuPage helped dad throughout the next several weeks and he passed away on August 15h, 1993 at the way too young age of 58. To show how strong my dad was, the symptoms of all that cancer did not manifest themselves until he had that seizure in May.  Less than three months later he left us.

For me, the worst day was not when dad passed. By then, he was comatose and slipped away as easily as possible. We were all as ready as you can be for his death.  No, the ultimate awful time was that Friday before Memorial Day when his death sentence was revealed.  We all made the best of what time pop had left but knowing his mortal clock had little time left was as sharp a dagger stab as you can imagine.

I doubt there’s a day that goes by when I don’t think of my dad and miss him the same with each thought.  There are plenty of great memories to dwell on but it doesn’t replace him being gone. 

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PHOTOS OF MY DAD.

So, as we honor those military folks who died while serving our country this weekend, I will raise a drink to them, but also, I’ll have another drink and remember Kenneth Robert Kahler.  I love you pop, miss you always and someday we’ll see each other again.

NEXT BLOG- Everybody back in the water!

One of the things I’m trying to do as a teacher is to get my high school students to land part time jobs.  These kids (and all teens) are at the age where they should be exposed to real world experiences that they’ll have as adults.  Not that these are spoiled kiddos but they need to see what it’s like to show up to a job as expected, follow directions from a boss and score the pride of ownership in the ways of a job completed and of course, a paycheck. 

Some students tell me, “I won’t work fast food” or “I refuse to work weekends,” etc. I always tell them these jobs are NOT what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life but it’s vital to push yourself a bit to do plain old regular work. 

And as far as ‘work’ goes, I’ve had a few of those jobs and they’re not always pleasant.  Yet, they were worth doing.

From age 16 thru age 18 & I worked at the White Castle in Lombard. 

Working the occasional weekend late hours of 11pm til 7am, known as the “Graveyard Shift”, I got a glimpse of what adult party life was like. White Castle was open 24/7 and the local bars & clubs would stop serving booze by 2:00 a.m. Minutes after the bars closed, we’d have lines out the door til about 4 a.m. Just ask Harold & Kumar about the joys of late-night sliders when you’re high or liquored up or both. Working those weekend graveyard shifts exposed me to a heavy stream of drinkers and stoners. Customers’’ slurring their words and laughing loud at just about anything said was the norm for those hours.  Some of these sloshed folks were pretty funny and while serving them food we used to take notice of who came through our doors with the worst cases of bloodshot eyes. 

Cleaning the men’s room on that shift was the worst. Drunks pissed in the sink, on the floor, walls, toilet paper rolls and once in a while these slobs even managed to squirt a little in the toilet bowl.

So many times, I went to take out garbage to the parking lot dumpsters in the middle of the night and found drunken Castle patrons passed out in their idling cars. Oftentimes, they had their door open and bagged food still sitting on the hood or roof. I would reach in, turn off the ignition and let the pooped partiers sleep it off. They’d later wake up to cold burgers and fries which may have been a great hangover cure. 

Working at White Castle wasn’t to be my lifelong career but it sure taught me that sometimes you have to deal with nasty and strange stuff just to get by. While glad I don’t have to do that kind of work now, I’m still grateful for the experience to see just what it sometimes takes to make a buck.

 WORKING AT WHITE CASTLE EXPOSED ME TO THE DIRTIER SIDE OF A JOB.

Upon graduating college in May of 1984, I spent that summer working day maintenance at Poplar Creek Music Theater in Hoffman Estates.

The morning after concerts, our job was to clean up the entire concert facility.  Everything was picked up and maintained to look brand new. This included the parking lots, the plaza, seating area, the expansive lawn, backstage dressing rooms and all the restrooms.

One odd trend was cleaning those restrooms the morning after concerts. The men’s johns would have a little trash on the floor and small puddles of spilled suds but that was about it. However, the women’s restrooms? Whoa! They looked like those retail stores that get looted during race riots. Most of the time, we found ourselves knee deep in paper towels and toilet paper with lakes of sticky wine coolers and beer on the floor.  The toilet stalls were such a disgusting sight they made me pine for the urine covered men’s room walls from my days at White Castle.  Even after mellow concerts by Air Supply or Herb Alpert we’d clean up awful messes. I’d find bras and ladies panties stuffed in the metal boxes meant to store used feminine hygiene products.  Apparently, some liquored up ladies decided “I’m sick of wearing this bra and rather than stash it in my purse, I’ll just leave it here.” I found the whole thing to be pretty funny and a little gross too.  

Working such a sweaty and at times unpleasant job as this wasn’t exactly what a recent college grad should’ve been doing.  Still, the pay was good and the hours I logged covered my financial needs for the summer of 1984 and for a time beyond that as well.

AN AERIAL VIEW OF POPLAR CREEK MUSIC THEATER. LOOKS CLEAN AS A WHISTLE FROM UP HERE, BUT THOSE WOMEN’S RESTROOMS WERE A DIFFERENT STORY!

The Poplar Creek gig was the last of my dirty jobs and things eventually got better in my employment.  Still, I’m glad I soldiered on through those less than stellar tasks and recall them with fondness and relief that they’re in my past.  Jobs well done!

Next Blog- Recalling a rough Memorial Day weekend.