Jim survived the war and recovered, to be atom bombed in New Mexico during the '50s and pace out another thousand miles or so at Uncle Sam's behest. By the time he entered his seventies his knees were osseous scrap. He hobbled about and swam within his pain, finally assenting to his doctor's offer of surgical relief. It was to include an unexpected opportunity beyond his strangest imaginings.
Knee replacements are straightforward, and supremely gory. The implantable prostheses are fabricated from the cobalt-chromium alloy Vitallium. It is biologically inert and impossibly strong, only failing in unanticipated ways,
cobalt, 54.5-65 wt-%
chromium, 26 to 30 wt-%
molybdenum, 5 to 7 wt-%
manganese, 0 to 1 wt-%
silicon, 0 to 1 wt-%
iron, 0 to 1.5 wt-%
nickel, 0 to 2.5 wt-%
carbon, 0 to 0.35 wt-%
refractory oxide, 0.05 to 1.0 wt-%
aluminum, 0.05 to 0.6 wt-%
titanium, 0.05 to 0.6 wt-%
Cushioning and lubricating collagen pads in the manufacturer's original equipment are fashioned by man of ultra-high molecular weight linear polyethylene in the appliance. The procedure starts with the excavation of a 20 inch vertical incision centered about the knee. The proximal end of the femur, the longest and heaviest of the skeleton's bones, is sawn off in a circular saw's blizzard of bone chips and blood mist. A generous peg hole is drilled into the stump and filled with initiated and accelerated methyl methacrylate dough. A Vitallium surrogate is wedged into the hole and the operating room staff pauses, praying that heat from the curing polymer cement will not cook the bone. They then embark upon a similar odyssey to cap the tibia with its metal replacement. They do doctorly and nurse-like things to close the hole. The patient gets billed, and possibly recovers.
Being the (admittedly perforated) leatherneck that he is, Jim recovered from both knee surgeries despite proficient iatrogenic and nosocomial efforts to the contrary. He was wheeled out the patient chute, temporarily held together with stainless steel staples and carrying a folio of medical warnings and liability disclaimers, to face a major life's challenge. Like a kid going to the dentist to have a deciduous tooth pulled in favor of the permanent one erupting, and getting the spare part to take home with him, what would Jim do with the two ends of his femurs?
The obvious craftwork, fashioning new heads for his canes, was stolen from him by the eventual success of the procedures. He no longer needed his canes. He considered and discarded umbrella grips, door knockers, door knobs, curtain pulls, candle holders, carving knife handles, salt and pepper shakers, and paper weights. He had in his hands what few living men would ever see of themselves, much less hold in wonderment. It was a vexatious conundrum indeed.
His new knees worked to a charm. He especially liked visiting airports and courthouses and setting off their metal detectors. The security people would run in circles like an ant nest with a stick thrust into it. They would have him empty his pockets and take off his belt and still the alarm would shriek as he walked through the induction cavern. Hand-held monitors would appear and slither all over his body until, finally, they got down to his knees. Jim loved to see the expression on the Rent-A-Cops' faces when he lifted his trousers to bare those monstrous incisions. They still boasted a full palette of greens and purples early on. His legs looked AWFUL. When the brouhaha would inevitably settle down he would say something like,
"You aren't nice people. I'm going home."
Everybody stuck trying to get through the metal detector, no small assemblage by this time, would laugh at the Rent-A-Cops who would glow with facial tinctures leaning on toward shades of brilliant crimson and gut-busting red. What good is a police state without police? Where is the proper dignity of fear oozing from the populace when confronted with an armed and uniformed official state terrorist? Jim had himself a time.
You might spot Jim tooling about town in his new car. Everything is pretty much as it came from the dealer, except for the gearshift and parking brake knobs. Polished to a brilliantly smooth surface, they gleam with the interior warmth of real ivory. No elephant lost his life for Jim's one extravagance. He takes real pride in his personal handiwork. In fact, they are not so much homemade as homegrown.