Post by Jolly on Nov 28, 2019 1:03:26 GMT
Music takes you back to other times and places. The wife was playing the piano just a minute or two ago, working her way through some Christmas songs, when she rolled into one of my favorites and it was suddenly back in the 80's.
Back in the 80's at my old workplace. Old hospital built in the 1930's with a lot of art deco influenced architecture. Indigent care, with poor people, folks down on their luck and pure trash. We used to joke if they cleaned the place up and took half of the true stories away, we could have been St. Elsewhere on TV. Kind of place where you didn't ask if we had any gunshot victims on Saturday night, but how many. Color us jaded. Real jaded. The kind of jaded where you didn't even pay much attention when you tracked through the blood walking through the ER.
But even in a jaded hospital, Christmas is a bit special. Maybe it was the coat drive the pink ladies did every December, for the kids and the adults that didn't have a decent coat. Maybe it was the toy drive for the kids on the pedi ward and for the kids coming through pedi clinic. Maybe it was the big Christmas tree in the lobby and the fresh evergreen smell that covered up the smell of Lysol in the first floor hallways. The world was just a little better place, even for the staff of a funky old hospital.
For us in the lab, though, Christmas wasn't Christmas until Blanche sang.
Blanche took care of the glass room and kept the morgue clean, not exactly a job that paid particularly well or people stood in line to get. In fact, it was a pretty crappy job. But Blanche had been doing it for more years than I had been alive, rarely missing work and never without her natural good humor, chuckling at our everyday foolishness. And I guess she had a lot to chuckle at, we being the weird and eclectic bunch of critters we were. We worked hard, always behind, always working in a blue haze of cigarette smoke, the roar of the centrifuges and the back and forth chatter of people who always had some kind of BS brewing.
Come Christmas though, we wanted to hear Blanche sing. Blanche didn't want to. Blanche was very shy about singing and I really don't know know who, back in the dim mists of time, found out that Blanche could sing. I mean really sing. Black gospel choir, belt it out to the back row, sing. She sang in her church choir, but the folks that went to church with her said she would never do a solo. And she wouldn't sing for us, unless we warted her to death, and it was near Christmas. And we only got one song...Same song, every year. O Holy Night.
When she finally decided to sing, she'd back off to the door of the glass room. Nobody watched or she wouldn't sing. Before she hit the first notes, the message flew across the lab that Blanche was fixing to sing and shut it down. Now. All the sudden, the centrifuges were turned off, the machines went to standby, the chatter was canned. If the patients died, they died.
Throughout the lab, you heard the old song sung purely by one human voice. Earthy, pitch perfect, never missing a note. Not another sound, but Blanche. Singing about a world filled with sin, pining for a saviour and the world suddenly had one. Would literally send a little chill down your spine. As the last notes echoed through the room, first one machine came back on, then another, then maybe a centrifuge was started back up or you'd hear the clang of the blood bank door.
It was ok, though. The room was a little brighter. Life wasn't so bad. Troubles weren't as worrisome. It was the Christmas season and Blanche had sung for us.
O Holy Night.
Back in the 80's at my old workplace. Old hospital built in the 1930's with a lot of art deco influenced architecture. Indigent care, with poor people, folks down on their luck and pure trash. We used to joke if they cleaned the place up and took half of the true stories away, we could have been St. Elsewhere on TV. Kind of place where you didn't ask if we had any gunshot victims on Saturday night, but how many. Color us jaded. Real jaded. The kind of jaded where you didn't even pay much attention when you tracked through the blood walking through the ER.
But even in a jaded hospital, Christmas is a bit special. Maybe it was the coat drive the pink ladies did every December, for the kids and the adults that didn't have a decent coat. Maybe it was the toy drive for the kids on the pedi ward and for the kids coming through pedi clinic. Maybe it was the big Christmas tree in the lobby and the fresh evergreen smell that covered up the smell of Lysol in the first floor hallways. The world was just a little better place, even for the staff of a funky old hospital.
For us in the lab, though, Christmas wasn't Christmas until Blanche sang.
Blanche took care of the glass room and kept the morgue clean, not exactly a job that paid particularly well or people stood in line to get. In fact, it was a pretty crappy job. But Blanche had been doing it for more years than I had been alive, rarely missing work and never without her natural good humor, chuckling at our everyday foolishness. And I guess she had a lot to chuckle at, we being the weird and eclectic bunch of critters we were. We worked hard, always behind, always working in a blue haze of cigarette smoke, the roar of the centrifuges and the back and forth chatter of people who always had some kind of BS brewing.
Come Christmas though, we wanted to hear Blanche sing. Blanche didn't want to. Blanche was very shy about singing and I really don't know know who, back in the dim mists of time, found out that Blanche could sing. I mean really sing. Black gospel choir, belt it out to the back row, sing. She sang in her church choir, but the folks that went to church with her said she would never do a solo. And she wouldn't sing for us, unless we warted her to death, and it was near Christmas. And we only got one song...Same song, every year. O Holy Night.
When she finally decided to sing, she'd back off to the door of the glass room. Nobody watched or she wouldn't sing. Before she hit the first notes, the message flew across the lab that Blanche was fixing to sing and shut it down. Now. All the sudden, the centrifuges were turned off, the machines went to standby, the chatter was canned. If the patients died, they died.
Throughout the lab, you heard the old song sung purely by one human voice. Earthy, pitch perfect, never missing a note. Not another sound, but Blanche. Singing about a world filled with sin, pining for a saviour and the world suddenly had one. Would literally send a little chill down your spine. As the last notes echoed through the room, first one machine came back on, then another, then maybe a centrifuge was started back up or you'd hear the clang of the blood bank door.
It was ok, though. The room was a little brighter. Life wasn't so bad. Troubles weren't as worrisome. It was the Christmas season and Blanche had sung for us.
O Holy Night.