OCTOBER 11, 2023 – We were in a rush to CareOne to join UB and Queequeg in time for dinner—early seating. As usual, Cliff drove like a fire chief on his way to a four-alarm conflagration. To cut additional time, he squealed into the closest parking slot by the entrance. “RESERVED FOR DOCTOR,” it read.
“Cliff,” I said. “Don’t you see the sign?”
Cliff removed his sunglasses and gave me his “Eric, this ain’t Minnesota look.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“It’s fine,” said Cliff reassuringly. “I always park here.”
“Doesn’t CareOne . . . care?” I asked.
“Ha!” said Cliff, leading the charge to the entrance. “Last week when I was here a staff person was walking by when I pulled up and told me, ‘Sir, this spot is reserved for doctors.’” Cliff assigned mocking emphasis to “Sir.”
“‘Do you think I’d park here if I weren’t a doctor?’ I said. ‘Sorry,’ said the staff person. Oh, and Eric . . . remember, this ain’t Minnesota.”
Cliff’s maniacal driving and deft assumption of parking privileges got us to UB and Queequeg’s apartment before they’d left for the dining room.
Cliff smacked the door with decisive knuckles. “It’s us,” he said, winking at me, “your favorite nephews.”
Queequeg opened the door. “Well, well, Uncle Bruce, look what the weather just blew in.”
“We’ll have to have a talk with the weatherman, won’t we,” said UB in a voice raspier than I’d remembered from my previous visit.
“Uncle Bruce needs to check on a few things before we leave for dinner,” said Queequeg. We all watched as UB searched his wallet, examining various cards. It was an awkward process given that he wasn’t interested in rising out of his wheelchair and made worse when he dropped half the cards on the floor.
While Queequeg helped UB reorganize his wallet, Cliff and I gave ourselves a quick tour of the apartment.
“Jerry’s done a good job, don’t you think?” I said to Cliff, in my quiet voice.
“Yeah. It’s not a garbage apartment—not yet, anyway.”
If the quarters weren’t exactly neat—clothes were draped over a chair in UB’s bedroom and his bathrobe was lying unorganized across the unmade bed—Queequeg had struck a suitable balance to accommodate UB’s untidy proclivities without allowing them to overwhelm the space. A table in the kitchen area served as a staging area for UB’s OCD relationship with paper. Some of it had spread to a kitchen counter, but to stem further expansion, Queequeg had established a boundary using UB’s “grabber.”
Once UB’s wallet had been reassembled, we were ready to roll to the dining room.
Seated comfortably at a table set for four, we were joined the last minute by a woman pushing a walker. An aid followed her and got her situated. “Do you mind if Wanda joins you gentlemen?” asked the aid.
“No, sure, fine,” said Queequeg. Cliff and I greeted her. UB neither welcomed her nor protested. From our meager attempts at conversation with Wanda, we realized that part of her mind had not come to dinner.
UB, on the other hand, seemed alert without rancor. He was unconcerned about whatever agenda I might have carried in with me—I had none; well, almost none—except to visit on the most ordinary terms. His agenda, free of his usual diversionary tactics, matched my own.
When the cordon bleu was served, I noticed UB had difficulty grasping his knife. Before Queequeg could jump in, Wanda surprised us. Using her own fork and knife, she reached over to UB’s plate and began cutting his entrée into bite-size pieces. Just when I was thinking that I’d misjudged Wanda’s mental capacity, I noticed she’d left her utensils on UB’s plate.
“You stole my knife and fork,” she said unexpectedly, peering at UB. By her bitter tone and countenance, I could tell she wasn’t kidding. By quickly restoring the implements to their proper owner, Queequeg avoided the outbreak of open hostilities. If Wanda had lost her extremely short-term memory, she certainly had no appreciation for the troubled mind of the man she had accused of theft.
For his part, UB kept eating, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
If I had an agenda beyond the banal, it was to inquire about the status of underground storage tanks on the Rutherford property. I knew that an industrial-gauge tank—used for fueling moving vans, back in the day—had been removed in 1985. Mother and UB, surprisingly, had orchestrated the operation under the initiation and guidance of Grandpa’s attorney, James Ely—Tom Sullivan’s erstwhile senior law partner. In the Great Archaeological Dig at my parents’ home six years before, I’d uncovered Mother’s notes and correspondence about the project.
Buried in Mother’s cache of information were some comments about “another possible tank.” As I anticipated the future development and disposition of the property, I was concerned about unknowns relating to environmental conditions.
In my law practice I was abundantly familiar with the environmental factor (potential contamination) in real estate transactions—liability under state and federal law; inspection, assessment of the environmental condition of a subject property; quandaries faced by buyers and sellers—and lenders—of urban real estate surrounded by other properties that are potential current and historical sources of contamination; who, as between buyer and seller, is to bear the risk of unknown and unknowable costs of remediation, particularly as standards evolve; and so on. Before we traveled too far down the development planning stage and even before we engaged an environmental consultant, I wanted to get a better handle on what we could expect and how much I needed to budget to address the current environmental condition of “Ground Zero.”
In this regard, I wanted to know—was there a second underground storage tank lurking on the property? If so, it had doubtless been installed decades before, which meant it was steel, which meant it had rusted, which meant it had leaked, which meant, not only would the tank remains have to be excavated and removed, but the soil would have to be tested and potentially cleaned up. The cost range, I knew, could run anywhere from $25,000 to $125,000—plus the requisite testing, assessment and report.
I put the question to UB. He knew exactly what I was talking about and the risk associated with it. “There was a tank under the front end of the driveway,” he said. “It was covered up long ago, but there’s a tank there.” He left it at that. The pineapple upside down cake arrived just in time to distract him from asking about the context and purpose of my question.
After our enjoyable repast, UB and Queequeg escorted Cliff and me to the pleasant lounge by the entrance. I shook hands farewell with them, told UB to behave himself and followed Cliff out the door.
“It’s kinda amazing how everything’s worked out for UB, Cliff,” I said, as the “doctor” backed out of “his” designated parking spot.
“It happened a couple of years after he turned 90,” said Cliff, “but at least it happened—thanks to Jerry.”
“Jerry and Cliff,” I said.
“Or thanks to Jerry and in spite of me.”
“I’m troubled by what Uncle Bruce said about a second UST,” I said, changing the subject to the future—or rather to the past as it might affect the future.
“A what?”
“A UST . . . it’s short for underground storage tank.”
“Okay, so we just don’t say anything about the UST,” said Cliff. “Besides, maybe Uncle Bruce doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No, we can’t ignore what we heard,” I said.
“Why not let sleeping dogs lie?” said Cliff.
“A UST never actually sleeps. If it’s there it will be found by the environmental consulting firm. You can’t sell or finance or develop a major urban commercial property without involving such a firm. If the UST leaked, that will be discovered as well, and if it needs to be cleaned up, that too will be known and insisted upon by any buyer and any buyer’s lender.”
“Okay, I get it. But I doubt there’s anything there. I’m not going to worry about it until there’s reason to.”
“I’m going to worry about it until there’s reason not to.”
“Fair enough,” said Cliff, “but you worry about a lot more than I do. I worry mostly about getting things done sooner rather than later.”
As matters unfolded, Cliff’s naive reaction to UB’s disclosure was correct and my caution turned out to be unnecessary. When the environmental consultants were planning a site visit four years later, I informed them of a possible second UST in the general area UB had described. After a thorough search of public records and an extensive physical inspection, however, no evidence of a UST, past or present, could be found—other than the one that had been removed in 1985.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
