How'd you like to go somewhere where nobody knows your name? Cracker crumbs and melancholy with my old friend, Jerry

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.

After walking around the clutch of old folks who are playing spirited cornhole, which seems to be the latest craze in the old-people’s home, I stop to turn around and appreciate what is occurring.

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.