Notebook Recollections

I have bilateral hearing loss. In both ears. From automatic hand dryers in men’s public restrooms. It’s like putting my hands in a jet fighter’s exhaust. Your hands dry quickly, sure, but the decibels shred your eardrums, singe your hair and untie your shoes!

You can’t put your hands over your ears. What do you do? Stuff your ear canals with toilet paper? Have the guy behind you cover your ears? But then there’s his hands!

Carl “Mr. Positive” Bentson knew what to do.

Not use public restrooms.

And certainly not peeing outside either, which has been illegal in Minnesota since 1957 .

I had never known Carl to use a public restroom. I once used the bathroom in Carl’s house. With permission. It was clean as a whistle, of course. You could eat a meal in there. But why would you?

Mr. Positive was many things. All good.

Filmmaker Mike Hazard said Carl was all goodness. I miss Carl so much.

It had been mentioned previously that Carl passed out paper cups of ice water to walkers by his house on 99-degree summer days. By the way, Carl had a huge, round, thermometer on the outside of his house, as big as a garbage can lid.

Carl was a weather savant. Really! He could have put meteorologists out of work. He knew future weather, past weather. The weather in Asia Minor. The weather in ancient Greece. He got the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers every day just to see “which one was right about the weather.”

Oh, I miss Carl!

He called me once, at 9:30 at night, so I could drive him to the Jefferson Avenue McDonalds for a take-out of a chocolate vanilla twist cone for the both of us.

I never turned that down!

On another night when I was making late night rounds at United Hospital, I received a phone call from Carl. He wanted to know if I could break away to go to Dairy Queen for ice cream cones for both of us and the patients.

Oh, I miss Carl ! An angel on earth. Ding-dang!

Read more about “Mr. Positive” at communityreporter.org/tag/mr-positive.