The Werebear and the Rainbow
- THE WEREBEAR AND THE RAINBOW - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in "AMAZING, May, 1985".
On a cold gray January evening in Vermont, in 1974, with the temperature outside at minus 20 degrees, my wife, Dot, and two young sons were in the living room, covered with blankets and huddled on couches that I had moved closer to the fireplace. They were trying to stay warm, watching TV. I was upstairs in the freezing master bedroom lying on my back, the bursitis in my shoulders was killing me, I could not lift my arms above my shoulders. . . As Charles Dickens phrased it, "It was the worst of times".
Two weeks earlier I had lost my job at Simmonds Precision Products. - One week earlier I found out that the pain in my wife's stomach was caused by a large tumor and the operation to remove it was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. - Two days ago the heating unit in the basement quit working, it would take about a week to fix . . .
Upstairs, I lay on the bed, freezing, on my back, forcing my arms up slowly against the bed, toward my head, one inch at a time, bearing the pain, bringing them back down to rest. Each time I raised my arms I was able to go an inch higher before coming back down. After an hour I could feel the calcium lesions in my shoulders breaking up, the pain subsiding, and soon I was out of bed, stretching my arms straight up over my head, no pain. The relief I felt was euphoric. I went downstairs to tend to the fireplace, while Dot and the kids slept the night away . . .
In the morning I drove Dot to the hospital and the following day the tumor was removed, she was going to be OK! Two days later the furnace was working again. When I finally checked the accumulated mail, there were letters from Galaxy and from Amazing Stories, and a third from publisher Ted Dikty, all asking me for artwork. As I read them I could hear Judy singing, "somewhere over the rainbow " . . . It was the best of times . . .
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