A cicada accompanied me into my old Saab as I went out in search of a laugh, a smile. A friend.
Incomprehensible loneliness -- a paralyzing sadness that has
accompanied my every waking … and some sleeping … moment since the late afternoon
of March 26, 2024 … when my brother, Eric, died – pretty much drove me into the
nursing home where my longest-tenured friend has lived for almost a half-year.
Jerry doesn’t know how he got here or even where he is and
why, but he listens, carefully, as I try to tell him how I’ve been feeling.
“Eric was a good guy,” Jerry Manley says, trying to focus
his hazy eyes – “I can’t see to read anymore” – on me as I sit in the recliner
next to his nightstand in the Memory Care Ward of the nursing home.
We talk a few minutes – Jerry mostly listening, but adding
the smiles I need – about my brother and his kindness and his firm conviction –
after attending News Brothers functions and film premieres and Lone Ranger
encounters – that his baby brother was crazy. And so were his friends. Jerry, Eric would say, was “the guy who always
wore the aviator’s hat.” It was yellow,
and Jerry doesn’t know what happened to it.
Gangs of work crews are painting the hallways and public
areas. Just the other day – on my most-recent
prior visit here – the old, dark-haired woman who parades up and down the full
length of the hallway in this dormitory of dementia (not necessarily demented)
seemed to be watching the painters’ progress. Or perhaps she was just talking
about me.
“Knucklehead. Knucklehead. Knucklehead,” she repeats, almost
non-stop as she makes her journey.
She’ll probably have to cut off her pacing for a few hours after the
wall-painting is done. The carpets, paint-spattered and looking like they’d
played host to a flock of seagulls, obviously are going to be replaced.
I ask Jerry if he knows the purpose of the extra sheet on
top of his bedding.
“I don’t know what’s that for,” he says. Perhaps it’s
laundry day. Perhaps he spilled his breakfast tray. Those are just two of the
reasons I concoct, but it’s not worth pressing the issue.
It’s better for me to just be here, talking about real
brothers and News Brothers with this old man – nine days older than me -- who
has stood by my side, a disciple almost to the occasional point of near-death,
since he introduced me to the Rhinestone Fatman at a party in a house somewhere
over near Adams, Tennessee.
Actually, it was the first party I’d been at since joining
The Leaf-Chronicle newsroom on September 12, 1974. As a high school sportswriter, I worked most
Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. And often Tuesdays and Wednesdays as
well, covering the football and basketball games of the high schools and middle
schools. And I always needed to be in
the office by 5 the next morning. Except
for my brother’s frequent visits to my apartment and to the sidelines, I was
mostly alone for a long time.
The newspaper had plenty of young people. And they partied
most weeks. I wasn’t even invited, as they knew I was working. Or perhaps it was my Yankee accent and
fashion-forward bowties. Of course, what they considered partying would pale in
comparison to the parties Jerry and I attended, even hosted, during our
too-many years in Clarksville.
I may be wrong when I say the party where I first drank beer
with Jerry was while David Rush – the aptly nicknamed “Rhinestone Fatman” –
strummed guitar and imitated David Allan Coe.
“You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’,” I said to the
Rhinestone Fatman as we sat in chairs near the record machine in the house
where the party was held.
“You don’t have to call me Charley Pride,” he answered. I’ll
insert here that later in my life, when I was entertainment editor at
Nashville’s morning newspaper, I interviewed Charley Pride a couple of times.
Gentle enough soul, as long as you don’t disagree with him, or some such, I’d
been warned.
My first interview with Charley came after his “mentor,” the
reddest neck in country music, Faron Young, killed himself. Despondent because “hat
acts” had ruined his own chances to thrive in country music anymore and with a
checkered love life and emphysema, Faron penned a suicide note and followed
through.
He had been Charley’s biggest booster, and I interviewed
Charley about the supposed racist with the heart of an integrator, his
champion. We spoke later for another story in the years before Charley died.
Back to the party. Jerry and the Rhinestone Fatman – belly pushing
hard at the snaps of his Western-style shirt -- were at the party as
representatives of their paper, The Gallatin News-Examiner. Jerry soon would move up the Multimedia
ladder to his job at the flagship newspaper in Clarksville. The last I heard of
the Rhinestone Fatman, he was a slender fellow in South Florida trying to get a
review of his mediocre album in the Nashville morning newspaper. I told him
there were much-more-mediocre albums mailed to the office daily from the “stars”
on Music Row.
But enough on that. Jerry,
who put his Gallatin weekly together in the Leaf-Chronicle composing room
before getting the promotion to Clarksville, was an acquaintance. It didn’t
take long before we became diehard friends. We both liked beer, laughter, The
Beatles, Stones and could sing the Kristofferson songbook from memory (if not
well … although that never has stopped my friend, Kris).
Hell, after he moved fulltime to Clarksville, Jerry and his first
wife had a son and lived on two lots – one for the house, another for the
garden – in St. Bethlehem, which now is part of Clarksville but back then was
unincorporated Indian Territory.
I spent a lot of time with the Manleys. I was their
dog-sitter when they took vacations – they had a pair of miniature poodles I
took out in the morning and at night while the family was gone.
I also was the emergency contact for the daycare if
something went wrong with little John and the parents weren’t reachable.
Sometimes I just picked John up and took him to Poor Man’s Country Club, where
I’d have a beer and he’d sit on the bar-top eating pickled hard-boiled eggs.
Perhaps I joke about the eggs. I was careful with John. Jerry and that wife
also asked me to be John’s guardian if they died.
Of course, I agreed and have been happy they didn’t die,
although John was a good kid and now does some sort of computer razzmatazz for
the space program down in Houston.
Jerry and I had a lot more adventures, and usually I bring
them up when I visit him in the Memory Care Ward where he lives with a fellow
named Milford, but who goes by Bob.
“What was that headline we put on the Chico, the Monkey story?” Jerry asked me twice on this visit.
“Deputies go bananas: ‘Monkey at large!’” I tell Jerry.
We agree that the night we worked with reporter Rob “Death”
Dollar to put that story, filled with primate poofery and puns, was among our
happiest in our half-century of newspapering.
The most-famous photo of The News Brothers includes Neesa (Perry) Trotter enticing Jerry "Chuckles" Manley and Jim "Flash" Lindgren (back row) and Rob "Death" Dollar and Tim "Flapjacks" Ghianni (front row.) Neesa was our newspaper clerk and she's gone on to a prestigious life. The rest, well, not so much.
For that one night, we weren’t working with a headline about
“The Full Moon Rapist” (I gave the beast the nickname for headline purposes)
and the terror he was causing in New Providence and out in the trailer parks
near Fort Campbell. We weren’t working on a lead story about a redneck who
almost got his balls shot off by an angry neighbor. And, as a relief, there was
no dead GI traffic wreck nor teenage abduction, rape and decapitation tale to
deal with.
Instead, we spent that night covering the tale of the monkey
who escaped from his cage in a subdivision near Swan Lake. He thought he belonged somewhere he’d feel
free. Tragically, neighborhood dogs cornered him and ate him a couple months
later. But he’d been able to swing through the branches, outside the jail-like
cage, for two months. It probably was worth it.
Bob came back into the dormitory room while Jerry was using
the facilities. Bob is always glad to see me when I enter their room, and on
this visit, he plopped down in the second recliner in the room.
“They call you ‘Bob,’ but your real name is ‘Milford?’” I
asked. He nodded and laughed.
“Yes. Bob. And Milford.”
Bob used to raise Tennessee Walking Horses, according to a newspaper
story that’s framed and hanging on the wall.
“How long have you lived here, Bob?” I asked.
“Long, long time. Too long.”
“They take good care of you here, Bob?” I asked. He just
shrugged.
He extended his right hand. “I’m glad to know you, Bob,” I
said as we shook.
“Me, too,” he said.
It was before Bob returned to the room to wait for lunch –
he went down there with me and Jerry as the woman who proclaims everyone a
“Knucklehead” trailed us – that I talked about my mental state with Jerry. (By
the way, as she trailed us down to the lunchroom, I tried to allow her to pass
us in the hallway. She declined. She didn’t call me a Knucklehead, but instead
hummed an off-key version of Amazing Grace.)
“I can’t remember anything,” Jerry told me as we sat in his
room, him chowing down on the packs of crackers and Diet SunDrop I’d smuggled
into the facility in my cargo shorts. After he finished those, he had a container
of chocolate pudding and some Pringles. He doesn’t know where those came from,
but I reckon the staff gave the snacks to him because he skipped his morning
oatmeal. A diabetic, Jerry needs food, though perhaps not what I deliver.
“I’m still hungry,” he said. “I hope we have lunch soon. I sure could use a bologna and cheese sandwich. Or whatever and cheese.”
I told him that since my brother died, I have been aching in
my heart. Some days I can’t do anything. I try to put words together on the
keyboard to keep myself going.
“I didn’t feel as bad as this when my parents died,” I told
Jerry. “I just can’t shake the gloom.
“He was the only one left who had lived my life’s story, who
knew all of my aunts and uncles, our grandparents, our cousins, Mom’s cooking.
Thanksgivings at Walnut Lake. The midget toads we collected there and released
in Chicago. Everything. I’ve got no one to talk with about those things.”
Jerry’s eyes grew a little moist, as he has loved me and
pretty much “followed” my lead for 50 years.
“It also reminds you of how damn old we are,” Jerry said,
matter-of-factly, as he finished off the SunDrop.
“You bring this to me today?” he asked. I confirmed I’d
brought the cheese and peanut butter Ritz crackers and the SunDrop. The other
stuff must have come from the dietician.
“Thanks,” he said. “I can’t remember much.”
We then entered into
a discussion of whether he has dementia or if his memory has been wiped clean
by another cause. Like our lack of restraint in the last quarter of the 20th
Century. Or perhaps Alzheimer’s?
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Can’t remember anything.”
Twice the subject of visitors came up. “John Staed came a
little bit ago,” he said, both early and late in our conversation.
I didn’t want to tell him that John, an original if not particularly
active News Brother --has told me he hasn’t been to see Jerry. He’d like to,
perhaps. But he’s not been there. “Only
in Jerry’s mind,” or something like that John replied when I asked him if he’s
made the trek up here from Birmingham, Alabama.
“Other than John Staed that one time, you’re the only one I
see at all. Come more often if you can.”
I’ve been there once or twice a week for almost six months,
and I’ll continue doing that, as it’s good for me. I am sure Jerry’s daughter and
a few other friends visit, but he just can’t remember.
As we walked down to the lunchroom, the Knucklehead lady
singing Amazing Grace behind us, I promised Jerry I’d be back soon. He was
eager to get in line for the bologna sandwiches, so I hugged him and slipped
away.
There is a lock on the door from the Memory Care Ward to the
rest of the nursing home. You have to be buzzed in and out.
I hit the buzzer, but no one came to help me. Then the
double doors swung open, two women pushing carts filled with bologna sandwiches
and cranberry juice.
I thanked them for opening the door, and I tried to slip
past them. But they spread out, using their arms and the food cart to block my
way.
“You must be a new one here,” one of the women said, as they
tried to force the door closed, trapping me in the Memory Care Ward.
“I’m not an inmate,” I told them both, pointing at my
visitor badge. “I’m here to see my best friend. I’m here all the time.”
They pondered, quietly, whether to call an orderly and have
me carted off to be lobotomized, when they studied my badge.
They called the front desk, where it was confirmed I was a
visitor and not an inmate.
I will say here that I like the folks who live in the bright
lights behind the locked doors better than most people I’ve ever met. Quick
with smiles, handshakes, pats on the back.
Uncommon and much-welcome kindness snipes away at my desolation.
So, the two women – both sturdy souls in their blue-smock
uniforms -- move their arms and let me pass.
“We thought you were a new person here,” one said.
“I’ll bet you get that all the time when you come here.”
I stepped past them, at first a little angry, but then
pleased that at least they confused me with this special race of kind people.
“Really, we’re sorry. We thought you were a new one living here. I’m sure you
understand.”
“Knuckleheads,” I muttered as I made my way to the front
door and freedom. “Knuckleheads.”
When I get to my car and open the door, the giant cicada on
my car seat doesn’t move. I push him
slightly and he barks at me before flying into the humid air near Granny White
Pike.
I know the bug won’t live long. Nobody really does. But, for now,
he flies free as a bird outside the freshly painted walls of the nursing home.
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