Palisade Pals

The people I worked for before the accident were very supportive. Cindy and I had bought a car before I was blinded, and the company put the loan on hold. They took payments as I could pay them.

You know, it’s kind of funny, it took three years for my former boss to talk to me. Even though he did more for me than anyone else financially, he couldn’t talk to me.

Owen Braithwaite is a guy who was never bothered by my blindness. It was his outfit I was riding on the night I was blinded. When I’d been home a couple or three weeks from the hospital, I called Owen.

“Let’s go to lunch,” he said.

When Owen and his brother Bobo came to get me, they left the car running. I walked out while Owen was coming in to get me. I knew where the irrigation ditch was, and I got into the car, reached over and grabbed Bobo by the leg, then slammed him in the shoulder. He said, “You haven’t changed one damn bit.”

I said, “Hell, no!”

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Bobo said.

Owen has been one of the few who’s been just as comfortable with me now as he was before.

I can relate to people being uncomfortable around me, because, believe it or not, I’ve experienced feeling uncomfortable around other people with handicaps.

Dennis Hunter is a guy I know, we go clear back to kindergarten. His first wife, Dana, has suffered through two bouts of non-Hodgkin’s disease cancer. Her first was when she was pregnant with one of her children, her second bout was just when I had lost my sight. When Dennis told me about it, I was pretty upset because I’ve known Dana for almost as long as I’ve known Dennis. She’s the older sister of one of the guys we ran around with.

Dennis went up to the Tetons, and Dana was home alone because she’d done chemotherapy. Cindy and I called her, and said, “We’re in town and we’d like to come and see you.” Dana said we were welcome, so we went to Park City and Dana and I stayed up half the night and talked.

She told me what an inspiration I had been because I was blind and I didn’t quit. She went on for a while, and then I said, “Wait a minute, Dana. What I’ve faced isn’t going to kill me. What you came through and what you’ve fought with is much more difficult. If anyone’s been an inspiration, you’re an inspiration to me. What I have to deal with is being blind. It doesn’t get any worse.”

It was mutual admiration for both of us. Here we had been friends for life, since the mid 1960’s, and not 20 years later, we were admiring one another for what we had to go through. We sat and talked over how it had taken inspiration from both of us to get through what we’re dealing with. I told her I had a difficult time coming up her and talking about what she was going through.

Dana died a couple of years ago, as a result of the chemo treatment she’d had. It destroys blood vessels and eventually destroyed her heart. She’d had one heart valve replaced, and then they went in to replace a second one, but what they found is that while they were trying to sew the heart valve into place, as they would insert the needles through, the tissue would shred. The thread would not hold, it was like sewing through cotton instead of fabric. So they ended up only putting one valve in. They didn’t dare do the other one. Now Dana’s gone. But my blindness hasn’t gotten any worse.

Chapter Twenty-One

Because of the small successes I built one after the other, learning new chords, putting songs together, then playing and singing in public for money, I was ready for one more step in success. “Okay, I think I can do an insurance agency. I can create my own job.” This was a decision I made because the insurance agency I worked for wasn’t taking me back. They’d already hired someone else.

In overall life and success, I have done better since I lost my sight. I’ve done more and accomplished more than I had prior to my sight. I’ve just continued to grow.

Part of the reason is that I was 34 years old. I was still growing.

When worked with people through my twenties, when I only had sight in one eye, if I looked in another direction, my right eye was not coordinated to follow. When I worked sales at Skaggs in Ogden, I would talk to people, and I could see them react with my one eye, so I’d sometimes go cross-eyed while talking to them. I’d just make a joke out of my single eye sight,

I wanted to continue in the sales game, but it’s a lot harder when you don’t get those visual cues from whoever you’re talking to. You don’t get the feedback. You miss the body language.

I used the small steps to success idea in the early ‘80’s, living with the guitar and performing, but also building the insurance agency the same way. One client builds to the next client.

Since I’ve had my glass eyes put in, I’m very conscious of my salesman role and having people sitting across the desk from me and act as though I’m sighted. What funny is that sometimes I get upset that they don’t pick up that I’m blind.

That happens more in restaurants. I’ll hold my hand out for the glass of water and the waitress will expect me to take it, so they aren’t very careful handing it off to me, and sometimes I don’t catch it.

The reason I do my best to act as though I can see is in order to put people at ease. If they don’t catch it, then I often times think, “How come you didn’t know I was blind?” It’s funny how you strive to do something and then you wonder why it works so well.

My wife says that I sit behind a desk, I look up when they come in, I stand up and put out my hand, so it’s no wonder they don’t realize I’m blind.

More people think I’m sighted now than when I wore dark glasses. They were a dead giveaway.

Chapter Twenty Two

Ed “Big Daddy” Roth came into the old building and sat down. He started talking to me about health insurance. I asked him, “What is it that you do for a living?”

He said, “Oh, I make T-shirts.”

He’d handed me a business card but my secretary, Mary Wooten, had reached out and taken it. As soon as he said, “Oh, I just do T- shirts,” I was turned off because I’d seen so many people come into this town and do some off-the-wall business that they thought was going to make it big, but failed.

I said, “And what was your name again?”

He said, “Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth.”

I said, “Who?”

He said, “Oh, Ed Roth. People call me ‘Big Daddy’.”

I about fell out of my chair. I had grown up reading about him in car magazines. Mary took another look at his card. It had the Ratfink character and everything.

Big Daddy said, “The main reason I came in here is that I want to make a sign for you. You have the ugliest sign out in front that I have ever seen. If I’m going to live in Manti, I’m not going to keep driving past and look at that ugly sign.”

I said, “I can’t afford to pay you to do a sign.”

He said, “No, this is my gift to you. I’ll do it for you.”

The thing I always regret is that I told him, “I want you to come in here and sign that and we’ll get a picture of us together.”

But he never did.

After Big Daddy died, I put the sign inside. It means a lot to me.

Most of the Pals signs Big Daddy made got destroyed because they were out on the fire engine and took the brunt of the weather.

Chapter Eighteen

When I had my accident, I soon learned that I had not only lost my sight, but most of my friends. They didn’t think I was the same person anymore.

One of my friends, Kevin, came across Cindy and me having lunch at the bowling alley near our home. He couldn’t understand how I managed to feed myself. He couldn’t figure out how I knew where things were on the plate and how I could put down my cup of coffee and then reach out and pick it up again a few minutes later. I was showing him how you use the positions of the numbers on a clock and other tricks to make eating easier when another acquaintance came by and asked if he could borrow my car keys in order to put something he purchased for me in the trunk. Not only was Kevin surprised that I was carrying car keys, but surprised that I went out to open the trunk and help move the merchandise.

After I left, Kevin turned to Cindy and asked, “Is Bill really as happy as he seems? How can he still laugh and joke around? Is he putting on a show?”

Cindy replied, “There have been some tough times, but the laughter is real.”

Kevin stated, “I think I would rather be dead.”

That conversation took place over twenty years ago. Twelve years after we spoke, Kevin was killed in a construction accident.

I often wonder how he feels about our situations now. I may need to do a lot of things differently since losing my sight, but over the years I got to watch my children grow. I went to graduations. I walked my daughter down the aisle at her wedding. I cheered for my son at his ball games and I got to hold my first grandson shortly after he was born. Kevin missed all of that. As for me, I’d rather be blind.

Chapter Nineteen

 One evening in 1982, we were dining at an old restaurant that was under new management. That new manager stopped by our table. Within a few minutes we were old friends.

He told us about his plans for live entertainment on weekends and the new menus he was planning. Cindy spoke up and said, “My husband plays guitar and sings.” So thanks to her, by the time we left, I had a new job beginning the following week as a performer. The only problem was, I knew about eight songs and needed to learn that many more in as many days.

Well, Friday night arrived and a nervous, shaky, blind cowboy climbed up on an old bar stool and started playing. There were just four couples in the dining room and they liked John Denver, which was good because most of the songs I knew were his. We had a great time, me most of all. I played the twelve songs I knew, took a break and then played those same twelve songs again. I made more money in tips than the manager paid me, and a new career was born.

I first played in the Gunnison Wisteria for Sydney Vaughn, a gig that lasted two or three months.

Then I played the Richfield Down Under bar, located inside of Days Inn, with Bob McCall.

Cindy had a lot of foresight to make me take up guitar again. My reluctance was the blindness, because when I had those little moments of sight, I thought that maybe I would get enough sight back to at least know when the sun was up or to see objects move. Something’s better than nothing, so legally blind people use whatever sight they have. It’s your most dominant sense, followed by hearing, then touch, smell, and taste.

Think about this: sight gives you the ability to project yourself through your environment. You can sit in a chair and look across the room at something on the far side. Sight gives you the ability to walk and travel and see and understand what’s going on across the lawn and across the street.

My environment, or any blind person’s, ends at the tips of the fingers.

In the early days, it was very important to me that I continue doing some of the activities I’d done before my accident. As I have said, I knew my life had changed dramatically, and one of those ways was no more driving.

At least, not on the roads. But there was another way…

Chapter Twenty

When I attended the demolition derby at the county fair in 1982, I, along with a friend or two, determined that since the object was for the cars to hit each other, why couldn’t I accomplish that as well as anyone?

The demolition derby I drove in caused a real rift between my mom and me. She didn’t want me to participate in any way, shape, or form.

Yet if I had not followed through and ridden in the derby, there wouldn’t be a Palisade Pals, because successes like that made me feel like, “I can do this,” and when a person has confidence in one thing, you can build from that. Everyone builds one success after another.

That’s what the Palisade Pals program hopes to do, to help the participants build on one success after another.

In 1989, Palisade Pals was featured in a local television program. They caught a little boy on film jumping up and down shouting, “I hit the ball! I hit the ball!”

Hit the ball, catch a fish, ride a horse, sing a song. You use those successes to build on the next step. Maybe that boy will come running home, saying, “I rode the bus, I rode the bus!” then maybe, “I got the job, I got the job!” It takes a lot of ego to step out and do these things. Ego can be a good thing.

So, back to the derby, we spent the next summer practicing in my old jeep. I didn’t hit anything, but I learned to follow directions called to me on a walkie-talkie. We used the face of a clock painted on top of the car so that if my director called twelve o’clock I drove straight ahead. Six o’clock I drove straight back and one o’clock meant turning ten degrees to the right. For the left side, we used the numbers eight and ten to avoid pronunciation problems. It worked like a champ. Twenty-three years later, I am still asked when I’m going to do it again. It was really a lack-luster performance but one crazy, fun ride.

One stupid thing happened. A BYU TV news crew came down to document me in the derby. The cameraman climbed on the hood of my car and was filming as I drove into the arena. Well, I had no idea he was there. My director did not mention it. He just told me to “show off.” So I punched my 455 cubic inch Buick and let her roar. We were fishtailing across the arena throwing dirt fifteen feet high. As I am having a ball, the cameraman is holding onto the car and his camera for dear life! Suddenly I hear over the earphones “STOP!” I slammed on the brakes and the man, camera and all, went sliding off into the mud, the muck, and the fence. I thought the laughter and applause was for me.

Wrong.

I didn’t find out what had happened until long after the derby. Nobody dared tell me.

During the derby, I made some hits and I got hit. No one cut me any slack, and I had a great time until I got hung up on the tires lining the arena, which ended my career in the demolition derby.

It sounds arrogant and conceited, but yeah, I’ve done pretty well with my life even though I’m blind. That’s something I’m proud of. I don’t say that to many people, but, yeah, it’s okay.

 Chapter Thirteen

Before you begin to think badly of the staff at the Blind Center, let me tell you just how great they really were. We had some differences of opinion, but it was more because the staff cared a great deal for their students and what we were going through; a phase in our lives not unlike adolescents.

When as an adult you lose your sight, you go through a period of time when you are trying to find out who you are (again!) You are establishing your new place in life and trying to maintain or develop your independence. Because of their influence in my life, the many staff members I met became heroes and mentors to me. Most, if not all, had Master’s Degrees and were conducting their lives much as I had done before my accident. They knew the secret to me returning to my life.

One young lady, the same one who helped me with my calculator, got me a tape called “Ninety Percent.” In a nutshell, the philosophy is that a person can achieve most any task they desire to undertake. Today we have the technology and have developed the tools for success. But there is still the need for one old-fashioned ingredient.

Determination.

A blind person can read with the use of 10% Braille and 90% determination. A person can travel with 10% cane or Seeing Eye Dog and 90% determination. The tool may give you the means to achieve, but the determination gives you the ability. We learned to deal with blindness with a sense of pride, a sense of achievement and most of all a realization that we could succeed.

Part of what helps in dealing with a disability is a zest for and an interest in life.

Stan and Elsie Adams from Manti were the epitome of that statement. They were both eighty-seven years old, and most of the time they made the rest of us look like a bunch of slackers when it came to studying Braille, abacus, or daily living skills.

Elsie was losing her sight, but Stan’s vision was good. At the school, he wore sleep shades as a blindfold, because his main objective in being there was to support his wife. I don’t believe he ever understood just how much influence he had on the rest of us to study. Stan and Elsie would sit and read Braille to each other at night. I can still hear Mrs. Adams say, “No, Daddy, that’s wrong. I’ll read.” Then she would read her version of the Braille text. There were a couple of times when we had to call on Wade to read the lines and determine who was correct. Mr. Adams swore he never cheated by reading the dots visually, and I tend to believe him. He had been and LDS Seminary teacher his entire professional life.

Besides, how can you doubt the integrity of a man wearing sleep shades?

Chapter Fourteen

On average, an individual who’s blind will accept and deal with it six months ahead of his family.

In January of 1982, I had an appointment with a specialist to examine my retina. He ran a toothbrush-thing over my eye (that was the ultrasound) and took Polaroid pictures, and when he got through, he and my wife, Cindy, were in tears.

I said, “Hold on, Doc, I know what you’re going to tell me. I’m totally blind and I’m going to be that way the rest of my life.”

It was his duty to tell me that I would never see again. While both he and Cindy were quietly crying, I sat up in the chair and told him that for me, it doesn’t get any worse.

“Doc, I’m going to school with some of your patients who will not live to reach my age. I can deal with blindness.”

Since those days, we have lost Sheila, Wade, the Adams, and several other friends. My “tree blindness,” as predicted, has never gotten any worse.

Chapter Fifteen

One of the daily morning activities was the coffee clutch. A number of us would gather for an early morning beverage, and, as often happened, we would lie about our fishing exploits. One such morning I turned to a little nine-year-old boy who happened to be sitting there and asked him, “What’s the biggest fish you’ve ever caught?”

“I’ve never been fishing.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m nine.”

“Your mom and dad never took you fishing?”

“I don’t have a dad here.”

We have no clue how hard it can be for couples, let alone a single parent, to raise disabled children. All the things I’ve had to deal with while being blind don’t even hold a candle to what parents of disabled children go through.

That little boy got to me. People with disabilities have the same desires that anybody else does. I didn’t think nine-year-old children should be denied an opportunity to go fishing or do any other activities that I had been able to do as a child.

The Palisade Pals started from that small incident, and has been one of the biggest influences in the lives of my family, my friends, and myself.

Chapter Sixteen

I left the blind center five months after entering with a feeling that I could have my own business, be a contributing member of society, still be a friend and partner, and most of all, I could still contribute to my family and our future.

I had worked with some friends in insurance before I completely lost my sight. After going blind, I knew my life had changed, but I always thought I could somehow make a living as an insurance agent. If I could be successful at running my own business, then I could again be head of my family.

It’s strange how important it became to get my life back to what it was before the accident. Being a typical male, I gauged my worth as a person on my ability to provide for my family. Cindy had graduated the year before from nursing school and was establishing herself as a professional. My accident pulled the rug out from under us and we both stumbled around looking for order as we understood it. She somewhat resented me for placing her in the position as main support and breadwinner. For my part, I resented her for being helpful and trying to do things for me. Slowly, we started to come together.

Stepping out into the cruel world, I felt confidant that I could start and run my own insurance agency. I had met a gentleman who had been in the business for twenty years, and he could not see any more than I could. I needed 10% tools; computer, calculator, filing cabinets, desks and a secretary (the rest of the world does not operate with Braille) and 90% determination.

While at the Blind Center, one of the councilors ordered me a talking calculator. This was the first one in the state of Utah, and no one even knew how to make it work. Well, after the initial excitement was over, I was told to put it back in my locker and we would get to it a little later.

Well, after four moths, we were nearing the end of my orientation classes, and my calculator was still in my locker. I began wondering why. We had been learning to use an abacus, you know, that Chinese thing with the beads, all the while listening to my teacher tell me that I could follow my wife around the store with my abacus and keep track of all the money she was spending (laugh, laugh). I got mad.

To make a long story short, I told my teacher just what she could do with her abacus, got one of the secretaries to read me the instructions for the talking calculator, and spent the last two weeks in my own math class called, “Talking Calculator 101.” Abacus was dropped that next orientation session.

The first problem when I started my own insurance company was raising money to pay a secretary some kind of wage. We worked part-time, about four hours a day. The mail took about fifteen minutes every other day. Slowly the client base began to build. Still, I had to pay a secretary. When you are blind, this is a built in expense. My music gigs ended up providing secretary wages.

Chapter Seventeen

Learning to cook was always an exciting experience. Cindy was working one night when I came home after performing in the local bar. It was late and I was hungry. The kids were asleep, so I was on my own.

Now this is familiar territory. I had been cooking since I was just a little guy. Hot dogs sounded good, and they were quick and easy. I put the pan of water on the stove and turned on the burner. Next, I got into the refrigerator for the fixings. While digging out the bread, the butter and anything else I might need, I managed to knock over a bottle of strawberry jam. It spilled all over the cabinet and me. So, for the sake of time, I removed my shirt and used it to mop up the jam mess, then dropped it into the closest sink and turned on the water.

Going back to the stove, I realized that the water I had put on was not getting hot. After further investigation, I found that I had turned on the wrong burner. The hot burner had a lidded frying pan on it. I turned off that burner and turned on the correct one, then picked up the frying pan and lifted the lid. Inside was a plastic drinking cup, which, when exposed to the air, promptly exploded. Fortunately, I already had water running in the sink. The pan, the lid, and the cup all went into the sink under the water and right on top of my shirt. Of course everything cooled off quickly and I had no fires, no broken bones and no burns, so I turned off the water and turned to the more important matter of eating. I finished my hot dog along with some pork and beans. I was tired, so feeling very smug and pleased with the outcome, I headed for bed.

The next thing I knew, the covers came flying off me and Cindy was yelling, “Are you all right?”

My sleepy response was, “Well, of course.”

“Then why is your shirt in the sink with the whole front burned away and covered with blood?”

I won’t bore the reader with my explanation as you just read what happened, but Cindy’s response was innovative, colorful, and totally unfit for this narrative.

The counselors and teachers at the OTP program knew for a fact that our class was the biggest bunch of losers they had ever had to deal with. One night, we went to the Festival of Trees, a Christmas fundraiser for one of the local hospitals. Some of the staff saw us there among the hundreds of decorated trees and figured we’d be lost forever. Of course, eight blind people running around a visual display of Christmas trees was a little disconcerting to the rest of the attendees. Many of the comments I heard were funny, and some were not so nice. It really is strange how people invoke the deities to wreak revenge on you, when you’re just having fun. We didn’t knock over a single tree.

There were eight of us, ranging in age from early twenties to the fifties, which would roam the streets of Salt Lake City in the evening looking for a new restaurant or bar. When we returned to the blind center, we would terrorize the dorm mother until midnight or later, until she would run screaming to her room.

She never should have locked us out.

Then we could retire, satisfied in the knowledge that our reputation would endure for decades to come, and it has. I’ve sat on the advisory council to the blind center for twelve of the past fourteen years, and have served as its chairman for five of those twelve years. In that time, we have been able to get a new building, combining the national library with the new center. We helped develop a training program that gives people choices, and is geared to teaching skills that make an individual employable.

I don’t want to brag, but the fact is, I do hold a reputation at the blind center for being kicked out of the dorm. My crime? Holding my birthday party off campus.

November of 1981 was my thirty-fifth birthday, and I felt that I was old enough to set my own curfew. We had made arrangements with the dorm mother, a lady who was going to school and had an early class, that our time to be in the dorms was at ten o’clock. If on special nights we were going to be later, we could call. If we could not get back before twelve, we would stay out all night and come back in the morning. This worked fine until the night of my birthday.

We, meaning all the students that were old enough, were invited to a neighbor’s apartment for my party. At ten, we called and asked the dorm mother if she would mind if we stayed until midnight, since it was Thursday and our last day before Thanksgiving vacation. She said yes. But when we returned at midnight, the doors were locked and she would not let us in. So we returned to the scene of the party and stayed the night sleeping on the floor, couches, and any other flat surface we could find.

The following morning we returned to the blind center and went about our daily routines. As the day went on, each of us were called in to the director’s office where he read a letter describing how bad we were for going to a party and drinking beer, being later for curfew, and staying out all night. Nothing was mentioned about all of us being over twenty-one and that we were perfectly all right for making the choices we did. There are rules against partying on state property, but not at a private residence.

Well, the administration saved me, the ringleader, for last. When they finished reading me the letter, they asked me to sign it. I refused. The dorm mother went completely ballistic yelling, “You have to sign, you have to sign!”

The director stated, “Your signature just means that the letter has been read to you. Counselors reading your file in the future would need to know that.”

“If I signed your letter,” I said, “six months from now, someone reading it would assume that it was true, that I agreed with the insinuations, and that I was guilty of something. Well, I am not guilty of anything and neither are my friends. I will not sign your letter. What I will do is write a statement to you, alluding to your letter and that you have read it to me and that I disagree with its contents. You can then put both letters in my file.”

Before you start to think of me as a totally obnoxious troublemaker, please remember that I was thirty-five, used to living on my own as head of a household, and raising two kids. Being told that I could no longer think for myself and make intelligent decisions was just a little bit too much. All of us people taking classes at the Blind Center were there to learn about being blind and how to deal with it, not change our lifestyles because a sighted person thought they knew better how we should conduct ourselves.

The end result was that we were able to sit down with the teachers and counselors and devise some rules that made sense for adults living in the dorms and apartments run by that state. Over time, the staff even began to think of the clients as people. What a novel idea!

I need to say something about my fellow students at the Blind center. There were nineteen of us ranging in age from nineteen to eighty-seven. Everyone but myself was losing their sight due to some kind of illness, diseases such as diabetes and retina pigmentosa, to name a couple. I was the only accident. So, to help me fit in, they gave me my own special “illness” – tree blindness. I have actually told people that I suffer from tree blindness and heard them say, “I’ve never heard of that disease before.” When I explain, very few see the humor in it. I believe you had to be going to the blind school to understand.

One young lady, Sheila White, was the biggest cut-up I have ever met. She taught us how to laugh again. Often throughout the years, I have stated that my condition does not get any worse. It is Sheila I am thinking of when I say that. She was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes at nine months of age. By the time I met her, she had been living with the disease for twenty-six years and knew it was slowly destroying her body. The last time I saw her was at a Palisade Pals camp. She was totally blind, had lost a leg, and was on dialysis for her non-functioning kidneys. The volunteers made sure she rode the fire truck, hay wagon, and train, with her wheelchair and all. What I remember most about that day is hearing her laughter as she enjoyed the activities and the children who were there.

I’d like to tell a story that illustrates just how nonchalant we were. One of the college interns wrote a paper about her experiences with us at the Blind Center. I will never forget one of her observations. It went something like this: “Yesterday I was sitting at the lunch table listening to the conversation around me. I heard comments like, “I see,” “Let’s look,” “Did you see that?” “Come and look.” These are common phrases until you realize that you are sitting at a table with blind people. But soon you begin to understand that most of these people have been able to see most of their lives and you don’t change a language. The words mean the same whether you have vision or not. They just see through communication and the mind’s eye, rather than with actual vision.

As a group we had many discussions about communication, fitting in with the crowd and the obstacles presented by being blind. The general consensus was that people with a disability have an obligation to make it a non-issue for the people they associate with who are not disabled. We spent many nights talking about the different obstacles, problems and difficulties of blindness. But while these conversations were going on, students were enjoying reading books in Braille, playing checkers, watching TV and all the other so-called “normal” activities non-disabled people do. I began to realize my life had not been ruined, only changed and that I could do pretty much anything I wanted to do.

The Blind Center taught me things that help me function in a sighted world. For example, you learn to hang your fingertip over the edge of your coffee cup as you pour. When your finger gets burned, you know the cup is full. If you are pouring a drink for a sighted friend, make sure you wash your hands first, because you have no idea what your own hands look like.

I want to elaborate on some of the people I attended the Blind Center orientation with. The teachers and counselors were an inspiration to all of us with their degrees and accomplishments. But living with nineteen other students, I got very close to most of them. We shared the same fears, desires, obstacles and goals.

The first morning I attended OTP (Orientation Training Program) I met a young man named Wade. He had lost his sight as a newborn to retina cancer. He had never had sight, and yet was so in tune with his surroundings that he traveled around the school without a cane. That first morning he was walking to class with Cindy and me, talking as we walked. He turned and went through the door just as if he could see it. Cindy whispered, “I think he can see something. He didn’t even hold out his hand to feel for the door.” As time went on, I learned that he had many other talents.

I had never heard of shadow sounds before. The best way to describe them is that they are the disturbance you detect (hear) from objects you are in close proximity to. I learned to walk down a hallway and know where the doors were. I could stay very close to the middle of the hall just by listening. This is not an exercise you use except to practice mobility. As you are traveling out on the street, you can detect parked cars (most of the time) large trees and houses. Traveling under your own mobility is very exciting, interesting and at times down right scary!

Wade once went to the Social Security office on our lunch break. It was thirty-two blocks straight west. When he walked out of the building, he got turned around. We were waiting for him after lunch, but he didn’t show up. He missed the first hour and the second hour. He came in at the end of the third hour.

I said, “Hey, Wade, where’ve you been?”
“I got lost.”
“Where’d you get lost?”
“How do I know where I got lost? I have no clue.”

If you get lost, you have sight to go looking for landmarks. You have ability to put puzzle back together and find your way out. When you’re blind and lost, you’re really lost.

The mind plays games on blind people.
When you’re blind and start thinking about things like the accident that caused it, or other catastrophic events, like the fear of being in a car accident, you can actually envision it. It all plays out in your mind. You feel the car closing in on you, and it becomes very frightening. You don’t have the visual cues to reassure yourself that this is just the mind playing tell-a-spooky-story game.

It’s hard to have dreams because when you wake up, you’re not aware that it’s a dream. If you have a nightmare and wake up, you’re not even sure you’re awake, because you can’t see your actual surroundings, to re-orient yourself and say, “Oh, it was just a dream.”

I dream more now than I used to, I’m aware of more dreams than ever before. I see in those dreams. It was kind of funny when I went to a conference for the purpose of helping a committee come up with some ideas of what they had to do to make the county courthouses and other buildings accommodate the disabled. There was a guy there who was a double amputee, with no legs below his knees. He said, “I had a dream about walking up the ramp into this building.”

I started to laugh. No one else understood why I was laughing. The guy turned to me, and I said, “In my dreams, I can see.” We both started laughing so hard, we were just rolling, and no one else could get it.
It’s such a different sensation; it’s difficult to explain to somebody.

One problem I had before I got a talking clock was how to tell time. I’d get up in the middle of the night, thinking it was time to get dressed and start the day, not knowing what time it really was. How could I know? I finally figured out that crickets don’t chirp before 5 a.m.

Another frightening thing is going out and not knowing where you are. I have gotten lost before, but you have never really been lost until it happens when you are blind. When you can see your surroundings, you might be confused until you find a familiar landmark. You can reason through your situation and retrace the path you followed to get where you are. When you are blind, reason is the only familiar tool you have. You have to stay cool and calm and do the best you can to back track. Believe me, cane mobility in a gymnasium is quite different than out on the street on crooked and broken sidewalks.

If all else fails, you can ask someone who might be watching you and wondering what you are doing, that is, if you can get them to talk to you.

When traveling and in a hotel room, I wake up and have to go to the bathroom. “Wait a minute, where am I? What’s happening?” You have to reorient according to different criteria than if you have vision.

Even riding in a car can be frightening, not going any faster than the speed limit of 65 or 75. I don’t have any reference points, and getting thrown back and forth when going around a corner just bugs me. This young kid that drives for me now is driving me crazy. It really bugs you to not be able to see which way you’re turning. You have the sensation of the movement, but you can’t prepare for it like when you can see the curve and adjust your body to compensate for the motion. When you’re blind, you have a sensation of the posts flying by faster, or whether they’re going slow. I notice the movement of the car, and I admit, that sometimes I’m probably interpreting the car as going faster than it is. But how do I know for sure?

I’ve wondered a few times whether it’s a reaction to the blindness or a product of the longevity of being blind, but now I’m claustrophobic. Do you remember when that Boy Scout got lost in the Nutty Putty Caves? I had nightmares over that.

We had the scouts at camps last weekend to pass them off on their handicapped awareness merit badge. Richard Bowman, a guy who went to a major school in Wisconsin for the blind, and a guy I call “Doc,” was there from the Blind Center to talk about mobility and teaching the blind. He and I went through a lot of things with the scouts. He showed them how to approach people who are blind, and demonstrated the sighted guide routine. For twenty-five minutes, he’s telling these kids all about how to do these things, and ten minutes later, they forgot all or most of what he said because you can’t learn all of it in that amount of time. You can’t picture what being blind is like. Some people think that they’ll get an idea of what it’s like to be blind by walking around with their eyes closed. But any sighted person can open their eyes whenever they want and be done with the experience. When you’re blind, you can’t open your eyes.

I can’t explain. It’s a different world. Most of the time it’s fun and a little exciting. Sometimes it’s scary.

One interesting thing in looking back on this experience, even now, twenty-three years later, is I never felt like my life had been ruined. Once I realized I wasn’t dead, I thought that maybe I would get some sight back. For the first eight months I experienced episodes of extreme discomfort inside my injured eye, and there were a few moments where I could see a much-distorted view of my surroundings. I didn’t expect that I’d ever be able to drive a car again, but I thought I might be able to see the sun.

One day I asked my mother why the side of her brown refrigerator appeared white, and why the tablecloth was white with big grey circles on it. It turned out that beside the refrigerator was a large rotisserie oven covered with a white cloth. The tablecloth was white with large horn-of-plenty images. After Mom described what I was seeing, it made sense. It also showed me just how bad any vision I might get back would be.

Of course, the doctor thought I was nuts.
As time when by, those moments of vision developed a dark ring around the outside. Each time it happened, the ring grew wider and wider, closing in on the center of my vision until there was no sight at all.

The last thing I ever saw was in January 1982. I was having a mobility lesson from Floyd in Salt Lake City. Standing on a street corner, I felt the familiar pain in my eye, which always came before a thirty-second window of sight. I saw movement as a car came around the corner and drove by in front of me.

“That’s an orange car,” I said.
“Close,” Floyd answered. “It’s red. You’d better cut this out, Bill. All this time we’ve spent in cane mobility, and then you’re going to get your sight back.”
But I didn’t.

I discussed this phenomenon with a retina specialist a year later. He believed that what happened was that the retina was detaching, and as the eye healed the nerves were dying. There was no telling what was really going on because they could not see into the back of my eye with the iris and other tissue in the way. The general consensus was that they could not fix it, there was no infection and everything was healing fine. “Let’s leave well enough alone,” they said. I whole-heartedly agreed.

By then I realized there were other things in life more important than sight. When you come as close to getting killed as I had, eventually you understand that blindness isn’t so bad. Yes, you have to accept being treated as a second-class citizen, and find a whole new way of dealing with friends who didn’t know what to do with you any more.

But you also have to deal with a new kind of fear you’d never imagined.

Floyd Hasinger from the Blind Center gave me six mobility lessons. In spite of the lessons, I still managed to get lost sometimes.

I got off the bus west of 7th South in Salt Lake City. All of a sudden, instead of being on the edge of the road, there was no edge of the road. There was no curb, just asphalt. My brain reared up, demanding to know, “Which direction am I going?”

I was fighting panic. I retraced my steps, trying to get back to 7th and 7th. I turned. When you’re blind and you turn, you hope you’re turning 180 degrees.

Guess, sidetrack, curb, corner. I could hear traffic on 7th East. Fortunately, I came across two guys on bicycles. I asked, “Can you help me?”
They said, “Well, just follow us, we’ll show you the way.”
So away we went.

I got lost in Manti walking down 5th South, on 2nd East where that pink house with the big tree and the metal shed is. I walked on the south side of street. Every intersection is an asphalt jungle. There’s no direction from grass or curbs or anything. If you swing your cane wider right, you’ll turn right.

So I’m walking on the asphalt, and then it’s like someone stuck a house in the middle of the road. I actually hit the shed. I turned to listen and try to get my bearings. It was the oddest sensation, because it seemed to me that the creek was running uphill.
Then I heard a familiar voice as Richard Peacock asked, “Are you lost?”
“Which way is west?”
“Turn to your left.” I turned toward the sound of Richard’s voice and was re-oriented.

Then I went off to school in September.