Pictures Aren’t the Only Things that Gets Old

      When you’re young, you never think about getting older. Nothing earth shaking there.  

 When I was 20 and in my second year of college, this is how I assessed the previous two decades. I was currently in college and before that, I was in high school, which didn’t go by too quickly. Prior to that, I was in Catholic school for two years, which seemed like forever and in public elementary school for seven years and before that I was doing nothing for about five years and it all just seemed like a very long time. I figured I had at least three more of that time frames ahead of me and if they all went as slowly as the first 20-year span, I would be around for what would at least seem, like forever. If I got a bonus 20 years or some part thereof, which I fully expected, then all the better.
 

When I turned 25 I refigured the numbers to conclude I had two more repeats of that time frame plus a good chunk of a third one, if I played my cards right. I was in the army at the time and time was passing like parade rest. Again, I was satisfied with the way the numbers were panning out.
 

Around this time, an acquaintance asked a favor of me. Rene, a barmaid at The Tiki Girls and a bit of a vagabond, asked a favor.
 

“Could you hold on to this picture for me? It’s the only picture I have of my two daughters and I don’t want to lose it.”
 

I took the picture and put it away in a safe place. A year or so later, she moved to San Luis Obispo and I heard she got married. A short time after this, I was discharged from the army and had to return to Rochester, New York on short notice. The Sergeant Major I worked for stored my stuff in his garage. When I did return to California the following year, it was to Long Beach, not San Pedro.
 

I knew a few people still in San Pedro and would go back every now and then to see if anyone had heard from Rene. No one had.
 

I met a California girl in Long Beach and we were married in 1976. I was 30 years old and a lot of stuff had happened in those 30 years and I figured I had a good shot at not one but at least two more 30-year repeats of what, again, seemed like a slow moving stretch.
 

We moved to the Outer Banks and then to Virginia Beach. By 1986, we had three children, ages 6, 4, and 2. I was 40 and believe me, a lot had happened in those forty years. It seemed like a very long time and if I could somehow finagle doubling that and stealing a few extra years I thought that would be very good, very good indeed. Our family had a professional picture taken one time and it reminded me very much of the picture of Rene’s two girls that were stored away in a footlocker. 
 

Surely, she could never have forgotten the picture. And it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t find me and it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t find her but somehow it doesn’t seem right that that picture is sitting in a footlocker in my attic.
 

This year I will turn 66 and I’m thinking in fractions now and not multiples. I think Rene might be in her 70’s if she is still alive. She wasn’t taking good care of herself when I knew her, but maybe her second marriage brought a little normalcy to her life. The picture in my footlocker is over 40 years old which means the two girls are almost twice as old as I was when Rene gave them to me for safe-keeping.
 

I tell myself that there are probably other portraits of the girls. Still, the one in my attic is the only first one.
 

How the hell does time get away from us? So many things are repeated over and over, vacations after vacations after vacations; soccer games and softball games and track meets; elementary school graduations, middle school graduations, high school, junior college, regular college, more college; moves—my God, I must have moved or helped someone else move at least fifty times in my life.
 

Yet her one singular request that required but one responding action to close the deal goes unfulfilled for 40 years. 
 

I could—and probably should—bring the picture to the thrift store. I see pictures in antique stores all the time that are homeless and probably shouldn’t be and I bet they all have a story to tell but I can’t do that?
 

I know what else I can’t do. I can’t throw it away. She asked me to hold it for her and that is what I will do. I’m keeping up my end of the bargain but something about that doesn’t feel so good.
 

I also know something else. I know I probably won’t be holding on to this portrait for another 40 years. I’ll never be this young again.

 

   

 

 

 

 

Childhood Memories of Buying a Christmas Tree

This is a revised version of a story that appeared in the Virginia Beach Sun on December 1, 1988.     

      Men measures their progression through time in many ways. As young boys, we cut our neighbors grass and as adolescents, we deliver their newspapers. As adults, we bring them their mail and sell them their cars and as old men we exaggerate how well we accomplished all of these tasks.

      For me, the one sure measure of time and my own journey through it has been the Christmas tree—or more precisely, how I have gone about getting one each year.

      I remember as a child, in Rochester, how my father and I would walk up the street to the City Service gas station where the man would have all his trees leaning on one side of the building. They would be stacked up in a giant heap making it impossible to compare them but nevertheless my father would hold up one after another, and ask my opinion.

     “What do you think of this one?”

  “How do you like this one?”

  “How about this one?”

  “Do you like this one?”

  Until finally he found one that he liked.

  “This one looks pretty good. I think we’ll get it.” My father would then pay the man what I suppose was a couple of bucks and then we would carry it back home. Not even the freezing cold could dampen my excitement.

Small talk in Baton Rouge

On my recent road trip to California I found myself just west of Baton Rouge on Highway 10 and in a strange conversation with a sheriff. He stopped me, told me immediately that I was speeding, but that he wasn’t going to give me a ticket. But he did want to talk and ordered me to step out of the car. What he knew about me was my name, I lived in Virginia Beach, VA and had no tickets or outstanding warrants.

In Hell on Earth, a love story, Hank had some pretty strange conversations with Foo Ling where they both appeared to be talking in circles. When my conversation with the sheriff was over I felt like I had just stepped off of the same merry-go-round that Hank and Foo Ling rode on.

“Where are you coming from?” he asked.
“Opelika,” I said.
“Do you live in Opelika?”
“No, I was visiting a friend. I live in Virginia Beach.”
“Where are you going to?”
“San Antonio.”
“Why are you going to San Antonio?”
“Well, I’m not really going to San Antonio. Well, I am but I actually going to Fullerton, California to visit my daughter.”
“Why are you going to San Antonio then?”
“I’m meeting my wife there and we’re going to visit the Alamo. She’s flying down and I’ll pick her up at the airport.”
“She didn’t want to drive with you?”
“Well, I wanted to drive and she didn’t want to drive so I guess you could say she didn’t want to drive with me but the main reason was she didn’t want to drive.”
“So she’s just going to San Antonio and then flying back? And you’re driving to California to see your daughter?”
“That’s correct.”
“Doesn’t your wife want to see her daughter in California?”
“Yes, she does and she’ll be flying out there in September.”
“And will you be driving out to meet her?” he said sarcastically and I was sure that he wasn’t expecting an answer.

I watch Law and Order on TV so I know a little bit about what the police can and cannot get away with and I was just about ready to ask him if he was going to charge me with anything and if he wasn’t than I was going to leave when he told me to get back in the car and drive safely. None of his questions pertained to speeding and the sense that I got from this conversation was law enforcement always has the terrorist thing going on the back burner.

And if the terrorist thing is going on the back burner and you’re a traveler (X), you definitely want to be going from Point A to Point B and back again. You don’t want to be (X) going from Point A to Point B with a stop in Point C and another stop in Point D where you meet up with (Y), who flies in, stays a few days and then flies back to Point A to await your return in two weeks, while you continue on to Point B. I’m only glad I didn’t mention that between Point C and Point D I went to Point E to visit cousin (Z).