03 - The Unger Memorial Library - MyPlainview.com

Page 10A - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - Plainview Daily Herald http://www.MyPlainview.com
Plainview Daily Herald
http://www.myplainview.com
Senior citizen
discount . . .
Tany Brown sent this email
Saturday, promising
that I’d laugh when I read it.
She was right. I might add
that I also relate to the “dude”
who wrote it. I once got into
the backseat of my car and
wondered what happened to
the steering wheel, but that’s
another column. For now,
laugh with me and Tany.
$5.37.
That’s what the kid behind
the counter at Taco Bueno
said to me. I dug into my
pocket and pulled out some
lint and two dimes and something
that used to be a Jolly
Rancher.
Having already
handed
the kid a fi vespot,
I started
to head back
out to the
truck to grab
some change
when the kid
Nicki Bruce
Logan
Neither Here
Nor There
with the Emo
hairdo said
the harshest
thing anyone
has ever said
to me.
He said, “It’s OK. I’ll just
give you the senior citizen
discount.”
I turned to see who he was
talking to and then heard the
sound of change hitting the
counter in front of me.
“Only $4.68,” he said
cheerfully. I stood there stupefi
ed. I am 58, not even 60
yet — a mere child! Senior
citizen?
I took my burrito and
walked out to the truck wondering
what was wrong with
Emo. Was he blind? As I sat
in the truck, my blood began
to boil. Old? Me?
I’ll show him, I thought. I
opened the door and headed
back inside. I strode to the
counter, and there he was
waiting with a smile.
Before I could say a word,
he held up something and
jingled it in front of me, like
I could be that easily distracted!
What am I now? A
toddler?
“Dude! Can’t get too far
without your car keys, eh?”
I stared with utter disdain at
the keys. I began to rationalize
in my mind. “Leaving
keys behind hardly makes a
man elderly! It could happen
to anyone!”
I turned and headed back
to the truck. I slipped the
key into the ignition, but it
wouldn’t turn. What now? I
checked my keys and tried
another. Still nothing. That’s
when I noticed the purple
beads hanging from my
rearview mirror. I had no
purple beads hanging from
my rearview mirror.
Then, a few other objects
came into focus. The car
seat in the backseat. Happy
Meal toys spread all over the
fl oorboard. A partially eaten
doughnut on the dashboard.
Faster than you can say
ginkgo biloba, I fl ew out of
the alien vehicle. Moments
later I was speeding out of
the parking lot, relieved to
fi nally be leaving this nightmarish
stop in my life.
That is when I felt it, deep
in the bowels of my stomach:
hunger! My stomach growled
and churned, and I reached to
grab my burrito, only it was
nowhere to be found.
I swung the truck around,
gathered my courage, and
strode back into the restaurant
one fi nal time. There
Emo stood, draped in youth
and black nail polish.
All I could think was,
“What is the world coming
to?” All I could say was,
“Did I leave my food and
drink in here?”
At this point I was ready to
ask a Boy Scout to help me
back to my vehicle, and then
go straight home and apply
for Social Security benefi ts.
Emo had no clue. I walked
back out to the truck, and suddenly
a young lad came up
and tugged on my jeans to get
my attention. He was holding
up a drink and a bag. His
mother explained, “I think
you left this in my truck by
mistake.” I took the food and
drink from the little boy and
sheepishly apologized.
She offered these kind
words: “It’s OK. My grandfather
does stuff like this all
the time.”
All of this is to explain
how I got a ticket doing 85 in
a 40. Yes, I was racing some
punk kid in a Toyota Prius.
See Neither, Page 11A
By NICKI BRUCE LOGAN
Herald Lifestyles Editor
Nolan Bontke was waiting for his
wife, Janet, to get to Prairie House
Living Center on New Year’s Eve.
He knew she was going to take him
home for the weekend and that she
would tell him if their newest grandbaby
was a girl or a boy.
Janet had spent the night before
in Lubbock with their son, Josh,
and his wife, Kara, then went to the
doctor’s offi ce with them to see the
baby’s sonogram.
“A few days ago I had some extra
time in town, so I bought some baby
outfi ts in both blue and pink,” Janet
says. “I was ready for either a boy
or a girl.”
She’ll have to take the blue clothes
back and exchange them for pink.
“We’re having a little girl,” she
says, rubbing Nolan’s hand as she
sits beside him in his room at Prairie
House. “We’d love a little boy, but
we’re excited about having our fi rst
girl.”
The Bontke’s have three grandsons.
While Janet talked, Nolan played
with a hand-held memory game, at
times seeming completely unaware
of others in the room, then making
a comment that showed he was following
the conversation all along.
It’s been nine long months since
he suffered a brain injury while
loading cattle at Tulia Feedlot. He
was hit in the head by a metal gate
that had been kicked by a steer.
“That was April 17 — it’s been
nine months,” Janet explains.
Nolan was airlifted to Northwest
Texas Hospital in Amarillo.
LIFESTYLES
“When I got to the hospital they
took me to a room where they take
families of patients who have died.
They didn’t think Nolan would
make it.”
After three weeks in Amarillo,
Nolan was transferred to Covenant
Specialty Hospital in Lubbock. Just
before Thanksgiving, he moved to
Prairie House.
Janet, who was able to return to
teaching at Highland Elementary the
fi rst of October, says the best part
of being in Plainview is the slower
pace.
“Nolan was getting 6-1/2 hours of
therapy and was pushing too hard,”
she says. “Here he is able to rest
more. He still has about three to four
hours of therapy a day. The rest of
the time he can sleep or rest. That’s
what he needs.”
She adds that the doctors tell her
it takes a long time for brain injuries
to heal.
“The brain will heal itself — given
enough time.”
In the meantime, Nolan is undergoing
intensive physical therapy.
“He is using his legs more and is
able to stand. We’re optimistic that
he will be able to walk soon,” she
says. “I was told that two years is
about right for healing time for a
brain injury of this kind.”
In the meantime, life goes on. Janet
deals with the day-to-day problems
that come up with the help of
friends.
While Nolan was in the Lubbock
hospital, Janet stayed with her son,
Josh, in Lubbock.
“It was easier to be close to the
hospital than to drive back and forth
from home.”
Janet says she is amazed and encouraged
by the care and support of
friends and neighbors.
“From the fi rst, people have
been amazing. During the summer
they mowed our yard, trimmed the
trees, fed the dogs and kept an eye
on things. We have deer at the farm
and neighbors put out corn for them.
Friends even painted the trim on
the house and cleaned out my garage.
A cement company went out
to the farm and poured a ramp so I
could get Nolan’s wheelchair in the
house.
“So many people did so many
kind things for us that I can’t begin
to name them.”
She has been keeping a journal on
the caringbridge Web site that gives
a daily update on Nolan’s progress.
At the same time, the journal is an
outlet for her to pour out her concerns
and problems.
“If I mention something I am concerned
with, someone comes forward
with a solution.”
Janet drove a green Volkswagen
bug and was worried about getting
Nolan in and out of the small car.
She mentioned in her journal that
she needed to look for another car.
“The next thing I know, I’m told
to go to a dealership in Lubbock
— one that used to be in Plainview
— and they met me at the door and
told me that they were going to help
me make it happen. That they would
help me work it out.”
Her new Nissan Murano is a Godsend,
she says.
“With help, I can get Nolan in
and out of the car. I can take him
home for the weekends. Both of us
love that — being at home. Nolan
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Page 10A
Nicki Bruce Logan/Plainview Daily Herald
IT’S MY TURN: Janet Bontke takes her turn playing a hand-held electronic memory game with her husband, Nolan, who suffered a
serious brain injury last April when loading cattle at Tulia Feedlot. Nolan transferred to Prairie House Living Center where he rests
and has three to four hour-long therapy sessions daily. Janet teaches at Highland Elementary and, with Nolan in Plainview, is able to
visit with him often during the weekdays and take him home to their place east of Kress on the weekends.
Bontkes look to a bright future
BY MARIA CRAMER
The Boston Globe
Krumping diverts teens
from street life to dance life.
At 16, Daniel Grant carried
a gun. When he wasn’t
skipping class, he was starting
fi ghts at school. His
friends were gang members
from his South End neighborhood.
But then a powerful
force diverted him from
what appeared to be a clear
path to self-destruction.
The force, he says, was a
dance — a frenetic form
of self expression called
krumping that is sweeping
urban neighborhoods.
With a strict moral code
against violence and philosophical
demands to abandon
any feelings of embarrassment,
Grant says, krumping
saved his life. And as
the dance’s popularity rises,
some community activists
and police who patrol the
city’s toughest neighborhoods
believe it has contributed
to a drop in street violence.
“We don’t have
the crime in Fields
Corner like we
used to,” said Lieutenant
William
Fleming of the
MBTA police, who
oversees train and
bus lines through
Dorchester. “I
don’t know whether it’s this,
but I’m a fi rm believer in
it. . . . When (commanders)
ask me why my numbers are
down, I say, ‘It’s krumping.’”
Krumping has no real
choreography, but there are
rules: No violence, fi ghting,
or cursing. Dancers
are to completely express
themselves with their faces,
hands, legs, and arms.
“It’s keeping a lot of
kids quiet,” said Grant, 18,
a high school senior from
Dorchester. He says he has
abandoned his gang friends
and rededicated himself to
school.
“When we’re krumping,
we don’t worry about the
people outside who want to
beat us up.”
Krumping began in South
Central Los Angeles, in
the early 1990s, where a
predecessor of the dance,
“clowning,” was born as an
alternative to corporate hiphop
and the violence it often
celebrates.
Krump invites dancers to
throw themselves into a cathartic
frenzy to music that
sounds like rap, metal, and
orchestral
pop rolled
into one
throbbing
rhythm.
Many
of its devotees
are
inspired
by the
Christian
underpinnings of krump,
which is popular in evangelical
churches, like Jubilee
Christian Church in Mattapan.
But for those who take a
more secular approach to the
dance, krumping is a way to
rebel against gang culture.
“It was either the street
life or the dance life,” said
George Ashby, a wiry
19-year-old from Mattapan
who began krumping
two and a half years ago at
just lets out a sigh when he sees our
house.”
Janet laughs when Nolan interrupts
her conversation.
“Let’s go,” he says, anxious to get
started home.
The couple, who have been married
34 years, spent Christmas at
home in the snow storm.
“A neighbor and his son came
over across our fi eld to shovel my
driveway,” she says, mentioning
all the kind things neighbors and
friends have done. “I told him that
we were fi ne, that we weren’t going
anywhere, but he said he wanted us
to be able to get out if we needed
to.
“So many people have done so
many caring things for us, things we
wouldn’t have thought about. Nolan
has a hunting lease at Roaring
Springs and a friend took pictures
of places on the lease, including Nolan’s
deer blind, and made a scrapbook
to remind him of those familiar
places.”
The Bontkes are looking forward
to the new year and continued healing
for Nolan.
As Janet maneuvers Nolan’s
wheelchair down the hall at Prairie
House, she pauses to say, “I just want
the people of Plainview to know that
everything that has been done for us
is so appreciated. We are humbled
by the continual outpouring of love
and kindness.”
Nolan agrees, repeating the last
part of her sentence.
After a pause, he adds, “Let’s
go.”
(Contact Nicki Bruce Logan at
806-296-1362 or nicki@plainviewdailyherald.com)
Krumping is setting teens on new path
Krump Krump invites invites dancers dancers to to throw throw them- themselves
selves into into a a cathartic cathartic frenzy frenzy to to music music that that
sounds sounds like like rap, rap, metal, metal, and and orchestral orchestral pop pop
rolled rolled into into one one throbbing throbbing rhythm. rhythm.
home, after he and his sister
watched “Rize,” a documentary
about the dance.
He asked Emmett Folgert,
who runs the Dorchester
Youth Collaborative in
Fields Corner, if he would let
him and some friends krump
in the back room of the community
center. Ever since,
they have been going to the
dark, bare room three times
a week.
Fleming, the MBTA lieutenant,
said he has brought
police offi cers to the community
center to observe the
dancers so they will recognize
krumping when they
see it on the street and not
misinterpret the aggressive
moves as fi ghting.
“You have to be very careful,”
he said. “You’ve got to
respect it. It’s their thing. It
comes from the street. It’s
their design. We’re just there
on the outside, giving them a
place to do it.”