Jerry Manley, age 31, with me, almost 31, behind him, arrive on a firetruck for the world premiere of News Brothers' charity film, "Flapjacks: The Motion Picture," November 12, 1982.
If you’ve never played cornhole – where you throw bean bags
toward a hole in a wooden wedge-like box – you may not appreciate how amazing
it is to see these old people, most in wheelchairs or depending on walkers to
get to the launch point. Laughter filled the hallway next to the dining hall
for “normal” residents.
Two women looked over to me, smiling, as I stopped to watch
their dazzling performances. I’m serious and I was a 3.85 student at Iowa State
University, where cornhole had a totally different connotation more than a
half-century ago.
This turned out to be just about the only time I had the
chance or inclination to smile on this visit to the old-people’s home where my
old newsroom, beer and smoking whatever pal Jerry Manley lives in the Memory
Care Ward. He’s been there since right
after Thanksgiving and – other than the snow week that froze me into my house –
I’ve gone by at least once a week since.
I’m there basically to reassure him that he is loved. And, I
guess mostly, I’m there to help him remember stuff.
If, for example, I talk about our early days of roaming hard
and nightly the streets of Clarksville, I’ll ask him if he remembers The Camelot,
where Buford Thaxton let us stay an hour after closing time and drink scotch
with about half of the Sheriff’s Department and a half-dozen regular cops.
Jerry will ask me where that was. I’ll tell him the
location, over behind a shopping plaza that housed Pedigo Hardware and the CVS
where I daily bought a six-pack of Coors Light for reinforcement on my way to
place where I felt trapped and sad. Enough about that. Everybody makes one
“worst” mistake in life, and that was the destination of mine.
Anyway, we’ll talk about Jimmy in the Morning, my good
friend the WJZM deejay, who generally was sleeping, his head down by his most
recent drink. Me, Jerry and Rob Dollar – the three who were there every
Saturday night – would wake Jimmy up. He’d order another round, for all of us.
“What was the name of that deputy we always saw there?”
Jerry will ask. Montgomery County, Tennessee Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddy
Patterson would also buy us drinks, in exchange for information about stories
we were working on. We’d generally dodge that question and turn it into us
asking questions about any new developments in the latest savage murder of an
innocent teenager.
Jerry laughed about that memory.
I’ll remind him of names -- Scott Shelton, Rob Dollar, Gary
Green, Big Jim Monday, W.J. Souza and Jim Lindgren, for example – and he’ll
reach into his foggy brain to tell me who they are/were. Some are dead and some
are living. Jerry seems surprised in either case.
Anyway, it’ll go on like that. I’ve already written about
our weekly discussions of Chico the Monkey.
We’ll also talk about my friend, Skipper, an old salt who
lived in a residential hotel on Third Avenue in Clarksville. He’ll repeat a
part of the first sentence of my first of perhaps 12 columns with Skipper in
them that I wrote over many years: “it was hot, boy was it hot,” he’ll say. For
context to newcomers, my first column with Skipper occurred after I sat down on
a bench outside the old Royal York Hotel 45 years ago. And, yes, it was hot
Jerry has asked me to bring junk food into the Memory Care
Ward, and it is something that I believe to be against all rules.
But, what’s he got to lose? I’ll stick sugar-free sodas,
potato chips, cheese and peanut butter crackers into the lining of my jacket
and deliver him the contraband. Generally, he sits in his room and gobbles this
stuff down.
I always feel bad that his roommate, Mr. Brown, looks on
hungrily. I’ve been repeating names, John, Joe, Bob, etc., in this space after
Jerry tells me the name of his roommate.
The other day, I scouted around the room and found a
newspaper story about Milford Brown, who apparently was a great Tennessee
Walking Horse rider 50 or 60 years ago.
When I have asked Milford what his name is, he generally
gets a quizzical look on his face, and sometimes he laughs.
I’ve spent a number of hours watching homicidal Dodge City
Marshal Matthew Dillon cold-bloodedly murder visitors to his Western town. He
blows the smoke off his revolver and then goes to the Long Branch, where he
grabs Miss Kitty and drags her upstairs. Sometimes she’s the one who does the
dragging.
I have to admit I enjoy, in an odd way, my visits here. If
nothing else, I am stirring Jerry’s memories. I think we’re about up to 1995
now. Since then is a blank, other than he remembers my name. Or does he?
The other day, as I entered the nursing home’s Memory Care
Ward, I saw Jerry sprawled out in a recliner in the combination dining room,
party room and social hall.
It was jammed full and mid-1950s rock ‘n’ roll played on the
television set. “Red Roses for a Blue Lady,” “If you Wear Red Tonight,” “Rock
Around The Clock” and “Blue Moon” were among the songs. I actually hate that
genre, but most of these people are from the generation where that was a
musical revolution.
They clap and stomp and sing along.
I bump Jerry’s right arm, waking him from his slumber. Cracker crumbs decorate the chest of his
sweater.
“I’ve got some stuff for you,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says, nodding off.
He hasn’t made a single motion to make space for me to sit
down. I shake his arm again.
“You want me to leave this stuff beneath the fluffy pillow
in your room?” He looks at me. “Yep.I don’t know why I’m so tired,” he says.
So I do just that, walk down the long hallway to Milford and
Jerry’s room, and store a Diet Sprite and some peanut butter crackers beneath a
furry pillow, fairly confident that when he lies down later he’ll wonder what
in the hell is making his pillow uncomfortable.
“Can I do something for you?” asks a nurse, who passes by.
“No, I’m just leaving something for Mr. Jerry. He doesn’t
want to wake up down in the party room.”
She shrugs and walks away. I don’t think she saw me with the
contraband. Besides that, I’m a fairly familiar figure here in this ward where
nobody knows your – or their? -- name.
I go back to the party room.
“I used to have two of those,” says a fellow who has his
wheelchair jammed up against his friend, Mr. Jerry.
I follow his pointed finger and I see a beautiful young
woman, a blonde, in a tight-fitting white sweater. At first, I thought he was pointing toward her
breasts. But he didn’t seem the cleavage type.
Then it struck me that he may have been talking about the
attractive blonde.
“You had two daughters like her?” I ask him. “She’s very
pretty.”
He shakes his head and points to the TV. “Two,” he says,
when I finally grasp that before he moved here he must have had a pair of
televisions. Or, hell, maybe it was breasts.
Ending that conversation, I awaken Jerry again to tell him I
have left him his contraband.
“It’s all beneath the fluffy pillow, the one that has a
furry side.
“Remember it’s there before you get in bed for the night.”
He nods off again. I think about dusting the crumbs off his
sweater, but I figure he’s a big boy and would not like to be treated as
anything less.
Usually, I spend two or more hours in the old people’s home.
I like the inhabitants. And I love my old running buddy.
But, even though I’m standing right next to him, Jerry’s not
aware or awake.
“I’m going to take off now,” I tell him, shaking his arm
gently. “Don’t forget those snacks.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”
He shuts his eyes, and his head droops.
I shake his arm again, softly.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” I say. “Do you know who I am?”
He nods and smiles.
I decided not to ask him if he knew my name.
