AMVETS SALVATION

 

Being around a lot of people for all of my working life, co-workers and customers, I learned to behave as an extrovert. Got good at it. But as a card-carrying introvert, I need more down time, more alone, recovery time, than most.

I’m the guy who goes to a party and wonders how soon I can leave. Most people dream of their upcoming vacations, leaving home for destinations they believe will take them away from their daily lives, far from home. The grass is greener syndrome.

Not for me. Home is my happy place, warm & reassuringly familiar. On vacations or family get togethers, I love seeing everyone, but I’m always counting-down the days, happy when it’s time to head back. Home to my lair.  

In full retirement five years ago, I mostly looked forward to not having to leave the cave at all.

That became unhealthy on many levels.

When Carla was out working, I started drinking too much. If she was out of town on an assignment, I often went several days without hearing any other voice than my own, talking to the dogs. A little step into crazy town. Knowing it had to stop, I banished alcohol from my own house, and decided to try a different approach. That’s when I wound up at our local Amvets club, a veteran’s group, with a bar. One, maybe two drinks and out. That’s been almost every day for the last four years.

But here’s the thing I didn’t expect…it was the people there that saved me. The comradery of a familiar group that comes from all walks of life. A Bell curve of  varied lifestyles, beliefs and approaches. So refreshing. Very quickly our differences fade into the background as our common ground, Veterans, and community, takes the stage.

A few drinks, some laughs, the football game, poker, bingo. The bright machines with flashing lights that call out to people looking for a little Vegas action. Old reruns of Wagon Train over here, Pandora country music over there. Didn’t that guy go on to star in Gunsmoke? Checking in on how the knee operation went, maybe a new house or dog. I’m sorry to hear about your brother.

Congratulations, support, sympathy, friendship.

Excited that the oyster roast Ed pays for out of his own pocket every year is coming up soon. A Christmas dinner today. Karaoke laughs every Saturday. The bingo, the endless dishes that the ladies group puts out for every event…all more nourishing than just food or drink.

It's family, and at this point in my life, on the day-to-day, it’s my fresh air and sunshine, even though it’s inside a darkened bar that smells of smoke. Swapping the latest stories, going for a laugh…it means everything to me.

Many, many thanks to my AMVETS group. Humanity without division. We’re all more alike than different.

I needed that.

Can I buy you a beer?

 

Note to Orlando

 

Orlando

2:51am. Coffee, a Trulieve chocolate drop, bustling about in the kitchen, gathering ingredients for sweet potato chili. Set the crock pot on low for eight hours or four on high. You know the drill.  Alexa playing old Moody Blues stuff. Thinking about Brooke being gone, remembering a time we all shared so many years ago. It seems I generally entertain the same memory points, ones I’ve revisited for 50 years, the rest of it streaked and unclear, a dirty window to a familiar but unspecific swirl. Another cosmos far, far away.

Maybe I’ll kick it up a notch,  Oye Como Va! Images of you turned to the record player, bellbottom jeans sweeping an acrylic carpet made of orange sandpaper. 

There was a cigarette machine at the bottom of our stairs. It came as a surprise to me recently when I realized that I hadn't seen one in years.

Peace & Love my friend...

Rumspringa

 

 

A friend in his 70’s was patting himself on the back for having completed a few days of productivity. He was proud of acting like a responsible adult, actually getting shit done. Apparently riding a wave of “fuck off” days as he called them, is more his norm.

A good boy, but only briefly.

That made me smile with admission of the fact that after I fully retired four years ago, every day for me is a “fuck off” day. Never inserting a “responsible adult” day, I’m like Snoopy lost in dance.

A permanent Rumspringa.

Sore from pinching myself about today, the only productivity day I’ll even consider, is tomorrow.

Satchmo sings in a never-ending loop:

“I see skies of blue, and clouds of white
The bright blessed days, dark sacred nights
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world”

If I had known it was going to be this good, I would have retired in my twenties.

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.”

 

“We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.”

That was on a cold January day in the front parlor of a Justice of the Peace 45 years ago. She was 21, I would turn 30 some eight days later.

We immediately moved to a shack on 38 remote acres of Ohio woodland. A gift from my brother and commuting distance to Ohio University. Our closest neighbor was a half mile away, living and raising her brood in a Tepee.

On that birthday night, my brother generously offered to buy us a lobster dinner to celebrate. We were to meet in town. But Carla and I had never lived together before, so I learned my first lesson in “Carla time”. Things happen when all the stars align for her, but not until then. Our 7pm dinner became, 8, 9, …maybe tomorrow.

I crashed.

At 3am, she woke me up to present the birthday cake she made for me. No easy task with a broken-down antique wood stove that had been converted to propane. The tank outside leaned drunkenly up against the front stoop.

No pluming or running water.

More like a bread bowl with a liquid center than cake, but in the middle of the night, with my bride of eight days, that thing tasted like euphoria.

It was better than any lobster dinner could ever be.

I hadn’t been looking for Betty Crocker or a maid. Actually, I hadn’t been looking at all. But along came this girl. So quick and bright, totally out-of-the box, the author of long articulate letters back and forth before we married.

I was powerless.

In his song “Galway Girl”, Steve Earl asks: “what's a fella to do?

Because her hair was black and her eyes were blue”

It’s like that, only with Carla it was freckles on her knees and hair that smelled Ivory soap.

Family Ties...

 

2021

I try to please her most of the time, but it's not enough. Her need is more visceral, deeply imbedded by shared DNA.

Best I can do is to take her to the source of her longing, watch her drink deeply of that linear connection, past, present, and most importantly, future.

Carla's active mind drives her too hard, too fast. Exits and opportunities blur. But not here, not now.

These peak moments allow her to pause and be present, completed by a human connection as old as our species itself, a bond that answers all questions of purpose and path.

Peace.

Thanksgiving Morning

 At 9am, this four-olive bloody Mary assures me of getting the healthy breakfast I need… packed with liquified vegetables, it's hard to beat. (Yes, Hannah, I went to the gym first.)

Two is better than one. Eight olives. Like them, I’m stuffed!

Later today, the club will deep fry 20-30 turkeys for people who booked a space on the sign-up sheet. Then at 3 o'clock they’ll serve a full turkey dinner for any AMVETS members who want one.

Carla is working eight hours today, gets an hour off from 5 to 6 tonight, and then she goes for 24 hours straight at a different job. So I'm coming back this afternoon to get a to-go box.

We’ll have a nice sit-down 20-minute Styrofoam Thanksgiving dinner together.

And yes, I’m very thankful!

 

 

Mexican Turkey

 

Apparently, turkey tastes better there. Maybe it’s the water but let’s hope not. Given the news of increasing cartel activity with heads stacked neatly in pyramids pointing the way to the snow cone machine, I expressed concern. Ruth assured me that the resort where they were staying had long ago been leeched clean of the slightest hint of cultural relevance. Zero Spanish would be spoken, and the kids would learn nothing new to expand their worlds, other than the quickest path to the waterslide.