It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun anymore. True enough, but I think I need to modify that Crosby, Still and Nash lyric a bit. Substitute “It’s” for “I’m” when I look at the steady regression amid strange and pungent scenes inside the Memory Care Ward where I’ve been a visitor for almost eight months.
I have just now crawled into my own back door, exhausted, smelling of
urine or perhaps my soul’s murder most foul, and wondering why John Staed is on
Jerry Manley’s mind.
I came into my office, looked at the wooden angel Tom T. and
Dixie Hall gave me years after Dixie died (read my book, “Pilgrims, Pickers and
Honky-Tonk Heroes,” if you are curious how a woman who died of brain cancer could,
years later, give me a hand-carved Jamaican treasure that I’ve decorated with
Mardi Gras beads and a Beatles COVID mask. You should buy the book and read it,
anyway. Might learn something. And loyalty does matter.)
“John Staed was here the other day,” Jerry said, just an
hour or two ago, as I plopped next to him in the party room/dining hall of the
Memory Care Ward of the nursing home where he’s lived since right after
Thanksgiving 2023.
“It was the first time he’s come. Glad to see him. Looks
just like he did when we worked with him.”
That “when” occurred at least 40 years ago.
I believe, as I said before, that John may likely have aged. Oh, he wasn’t really a ride-until-dawn News Brother, so he may have neither the scars of war around his eyes nor the battered soul of constant defeat. He was a more serious fellow who used to call in sick so he could lounge in the sun outside his apartment in the Belle Forest complex at what then was Clarksville’s edge.
I can say this,
because when I was associate editor and John – who did not know why some
basketball shots counted three points and others only two – was “sports
editor.” He only did it for the money, he admitted, when he called in sick
during the high school basketball tournaments, forcing me to work both my day
shift and his night shift for a couple of weeks. He waved at me from his lounge
chair when I drove over to check on his health. I fired up a smoke and waved back.
The “Clarksville’s Edge” noted above is not so easily
defined now, as Clarksville basically has merged with the other “let’s grow
faster than we can handle on our infrastructure” member of the Nashville Idiotic
Metroplex.
Well, they have their own share of greedy and incompetent
good old boys up there in Clarksville, but they all own memberships to the
Nashville Symphony and enjoy looking up the skirts of the bridal party girls
after they lose their panties to breathe free on the party buses. Fish-and-finger
pie, indeed. The big shots from throughout this doomed Metroplex say their idea
of fine dining is the Old Spaghetti Factory, or whatever the joint was called
before the idiot detonated his camper truck while his hands melted on the
steering wheel one quiet Christmas morn a few years ago. I had to cover that explosion for Reuters News
Service, which diverted me from my normal holiday gloom that year.
Anyway, the other point I need to make here is that John
Staed, a really good guy, has not visited Jerry in the nursing home where he’s
lived – if that’s what indeed you’d call it – for eight months.
I’d recommend John not visit, as he gets full credit for
going, even though he never has. I mean, I’d stay home, too, as long as somehow
Jerry thought I had been there. Course, he couldn’t get his two packs of Ritz
crackers – one cheese and one peanut butter this time – and his pint of Diet
SunDrop if I stayed home.
I told Jerry, as he stared at the stagnant TV, that his
treats were down by his bed – I’d gone down there and left them there when I
noticed he wasn’t in his room. His bed was busted, so I briefly thought perhaps
he was dead. He was only sleeping down
in the party room.
“I could use some exercise, so let’s go down to my room,” he
said in his subtle Lewisburg brogue.
“Man, I’m hungry,” he said, five minutes later, after
devouring those contraband treats this visit.
T’Alijah, the dreadlocked nurse, solid as a linebacker but
lovely and kind, had gazed at my bulging sack of delights (the food and
beverage, I guess I should note) as she let me through the double-locked doors
to the Memory Care Ward.
“I really wish old Jeff Walter would come,” said Jerry, in
response to my mention of the truly nice guy who met me for lunch a couple days
prior at what has become my favorite local eatery.
I had the skinny omelette, by the way, which I’d recommend.
Jeff, who paid (I always appreciate it when someone else does) had shrimp and
grits.
Jeff, a singer-songwriter, a spiritual man, a father and
grandfather and husband, who does copy editing on the side, had wanted to spend
time with me (doesn’t everybody? No takers?) partly because I’m such an
optimistic fellow. “You are one cheerful
fuck,” as my mother used to say to me before she died toward the end of the
last century. May have been her last words.
Jeff, who worked under Jerry’s then much-thinner auspices at
the city’s defunct morning newspaper, left the daily newspaper (it’s really not
defunct, it just seems like it … pick one up, and it’s not even the skeleton of
the paper my pal, John Seigenthaler – he really did love me and my writing and dedication
to real journalism, as well as my charm and pony-tail – took such pride in.)
“It’s turned into a piece of shit,” John Seigenthaler told
me one day while we munched on pastries and guzzled four hours of coffee at a Hillsboro
Village eatery that no longer exists. The 10th anniversary of Seig’s
death was recently, so our coffee marathon had to have taken place before July
11, 2014.
If you don’t believe he said that, then ask him in the next
world, if, as the old myth in an embossed leather cover maintains, there is
such. I’ll be happy if there is, as I’d
see my parents and brother while I’m looking for John Lennon and Jesus. They
used the same barber. I believe in both of them, loved their music, lyrics and
the water-into-wine/loaves and fishes routine.
The Rooftop Concert and Sermon on the Mount, as similar as they are,
remain my favorite concerts.
All of this is to say that I had a great time with Jeff Walter
the other day. One thing he asked me was if I thought it would be a good thing
if he visited Jerry, in the nursing home maybe a mile from the restaurant.
Jeff had visited his old boss back during the holidays and
wasn’t sure if Jerry even knew he was there.
I told Jeff to expect less this time around, but Jerry would
be glad to see him. Jeff did go, grew
somewhat dispirited – I’ve seen the decline steadily, on a weekly, even
twice-weekly basis, so it is not as jarring. The decline would be shocking if
separated by six or seven months.
Jeff told me later that he stayed 20 minutes, but then left,
as Jerry kept watching TV. The jovial host was watching “Two for the Road,”
starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, from 1967, according to Jeff’s
follow-up report. Jeff said Jerry’s roommate, Bob/Milford, wandered in and “we
exchanged pleasantries” and Bob laid down on his bed and went to sleep.
Days later, when I visit, Jerry says he wishes Jeff would
visit. “I’d really like to see him sometime. Good guy. Haven’t seen him in
years.”
So, in Jerry's mind, Jeff has not visited … but John Staed has.
And the biggest newspaper asshole of them all, “newspaperman” Wendell Wilson
even dropped in recently. In Jerry’s increasingly scrambled mind field of
dreams.
When I first located Jerry in the party room on this visit,
he was staring at a TV. A “Greatest Hits
of the 1960s” DVD was playing, and the screen was stagnant. Just a brightly
colored listing of the songs and artists.
If your boots were made for walking or if you want your buttercup to
fill you up, well, you’d have liked the music.
Me, I was glad he’d decided to leave “Incense and
Peppermints” behind and walk on down the hall to his room.
As mentioned earlier, I’d actually gone to his room before I
sought him out. It kind of scared me a bit, as his mattress and box springs
were on the floor. The bed frame was not there. My first thought was that they
likely were disassembling the bed because Jerry was dead.
“I didn’t notice that,’’ said Jerry, when we got back to his
room and I pointed out that his bed is perhaps 18 inches closer to the floor
than it used to be.
“I guess they’ll get me a new one,” he said, of the frame. “I
don’t know what happened. Bob sat on it, and it broke.”
Bob, who is lying on his bed and watching a “Bewitched”
episode where magic brought George and Martha Washington to Darren and
Samantha’s suburban home, weighs at the most 75 pounds. Jerry is pushing 250. I
do have my guess as to who broke the bed.
Anyway, I looked up and said out loud that I wish Elizabeth
Montgomery would twitch something other than her nose. Neither of the gents in
the room had any idea I’d even said anything.
I guess they were waiting for Esmerelda to reverse the time
travel and send George and Martha back to the 18th century. Hell, perhaps they think this is a
documentary, I reckoned. I remembered that a few weeks ago, the two watched a
Harrison Ford sci-fi film and believed it to be a news report of things taking
place in space that very day.
I mentioned to Jerry that former Leaf-Chronicle
compositor-turned-computer chief Terry Vaughan had died. I always liked Terry.
In fact, Staed recruited Terry to help him make a country farm shack livable.
All the handyman’s work notwithstanding, the place was a hovel and John moved
out when he realized the only heat was a wood stove and he had to collect the fuel himself. He decided to get married in order to stay warm back in the city. It has
turned out to be a happy union. Most of us had at least one miss. Thank God, at least in my case.
Jerry couldn’t remember Terry.
Nor did he have any idea of what is going on in the world.
He did know, last week, that Trump had been shot by an ear-marksman, another
one of those American wackos who try to kill people from JFK to RFK to MLK to
Gerald Ford to John Lennon to Ronald Reagan to Donald John Trump for the thrill
of the sport and the recognition. Mark David Chapman ruined my world 44 years
ago, another sad story.
As I told my good friend, Bobby Bare, the other day, I don’t
think assassination has any place in American politics. Seems like a brave and unique moral stand, doesn't it? Time and a mean nation have proven me wrong
again, I must admit.
“Did you know that Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential
race and that Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate?” I asked Jerry.
“She’s a Black woman, isn’t she?” he asked, after admitting
he hadn’t heard that news.
He laughed a little when he saw George Washington and his
wife had gone back to their appropriate place in time, just before Barbara Eden
brought “I Dream Of Jeannie” on the TV screen.
Another documentary for these guys.
I was growing uncomfortable in Bob’s recliner – Jerry was on
his own. Before I sat down, I noticed a huge, brown stain covering
three-fourths of the seat. I touched it,
and it was dry, and I couldn’t sit on the broken bed, so I sat down.
“Is this a piss stain on the chair?” I asked Jerry, as I
stood up to show it to him.
“I don’t remember
that, but it sure could be. I never really know,” he said.
It did smell, though, and as I sweated more in their
86-degree room, that aroma began to cling to my clothing, hair, even my thick whiskers
began to fall from my beard because of the stench.
“Let’s get you down to the dining room,” I said, as the
world turned in my stomach. “It’s about lunchtime.”
“Damn I’m hungry,” Jerry added, forcing himself to his feet.
He was plenty wobbly, but I’m no agile prize myself, though
I do have a dandy cane my brother made for me before he died recently.
Jerry laughed a bit, mentioning the Chico the Monkey story, one
of the climaxes of The News Brothers’ reign of good journalism. The story of the police search for an escaped
monkey, as I’ve noted many times, led the front page one Sunday morning. As the editor in charge of that tale and its lead-story play, I got in trouble. Again.
It’s one of the few things Jerry remembers about his 40-year
newspaper career. I’ve told the story many times here, the gist of it is that
we led the paper with Rob Dollar's pun-filled story about the terrified deputies’ search
for the errant squirrel monkey, who breathed free a couple of months before he
was eaten by dogs.
It had all the elements of a good story: slapstick comedy, terrified
deputies, laughing dispatchers, drooling newspapermen guffawing with each scanner transmission. It began with good humor and ended in death.
We may have celebrated with supplies from composing room
foreman Glover Williams’ desk. Jerry
doesn’t remember Glover anymore. Glover
was Terry’s supervisor.
Of course, we ended up at Camelot, where Jimmy in the
Morning, the alcohol-calmed deejay, slumped down on his table and bought us drinks.
Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Patterson and County Detective Cliff Smith also
shared drinks with us. We didn’t like it
much when friendly copper Sgt. Mike Barrett came in, slapping his holster. “Happiness is a warm gun,” we’d all sing when
Mike came in. Long story about Mike. Mostly, bang-bang, shoot-shoot. In the back.
I tried to direct Jerry to a new experience the other day:
The world. Since it was a bit cooler than normal on this day, I pointed to the
door to the outdoors courtyard, enclosed by a high fence Tom Sawyer would
envy. “You want to go out there? You
haven’t been outside since the end of November,” I said.
He declined. “I don’t want to go outside. Don’t need it.” He’s one who never sings “Here Comes the Sun.”
Never sees it, as the blinds are always pulled shut in the room he shares with
Milford/Bob.
Anyway, we got to the lunchroom, where people were beginning
to gather.
“I’ve got to get to my table,” Jerry said, pointing to what
the nurses call “The Guys’ Table,” where the four men, incarcerated here among
a host of women, eat.
I followed him. And he sat at the wrong table, shocking two
women who already were seated.
“Do you mind if we sit here?” I asked one woman, who looked
at my John Lennon shirt and smiled. “I
like the Beatles, too,” she said, giggling.
The other woman just looked blankly at Jerry, wondering,
likely, how he could have missed his regular dining table so easily and what
was the big stain covering his gray sweatpants.
“I’m looking for my daughter and granddaughter,” said the
first woman just before I thought she was going to launch into
“Helter-Skelter.”
“I know they are
here, but they are playing hide-and-seek,” she said. “They play hide-and-seek all the time here.”
I looked around and saw neither daughter nor granddaughter,
Just T’Alijah with a big pitcher of cranberry juice.
“Did you know my granddaughter won her game Monday?” the
woman said. She moved her two arms in a motion that indicated the girl was
playing either golf, tennis, baseball, softball, football, croquet or field
hockey.
“Yes, I heard that,” I told her. “That was something. Great
victory.”
She smiled. Jerry finished his cranberry juice and stood up.
I’ll come back when it’s lunchtime,” he said. It was about five minutes to noon, when lunch is served.
The kind woman giggled but kept on looking for her scampish
daughter and granddaughter, who were playing hide-and-seek.
We walked all the way to Jerry’s room, and I sat back down
in the stained chair.
Jeannie was in her skimpies on the TV and she was using her
magic to clean the uniform of Lieutenant Dan, or whatever character J.R. Ewing played in that show.
Jerry stood up with a jolt after about three minutes.
It suddenly was lunchtime, he realized.
He walked unsteadily down the hallway and I, too, wondered
why his clothes were so stained. They
supposedly do his laundry regularly here. He must’ve thought these gray
sweatpants were clean. Perhaps they were at the beginning of a very long day.
I looked behind us, and Milford/Bob was following us to the
lunchroom. I did not want to go back in there, see the empty eyes and hear the
senseless giggling. It was hot and I was tired.
I was so glad that T’Alijah stepped from the lunchroom to
welcome Jerry.
“God, you are a sight for sore eyes,” I said to the lovely
woman, who somehow can smile even while lives glimmer around her.
She loves these people.
I do, too, of course. Especially Jerry, who I tap on the
shoulder.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” I say, as he turns, slowly,
into the lunchroom.
“I’ll let you out,” says T’Alijah, turning toward me.
She punches in the code and holds open the double-locked
door. I pass through.
On the way through the “normal people” part of the nursing
home, a really attractive young social worker is asking Olympics trivia
questions to about 20 women.
“True or false: The Olympics include softball and baseball
this year?” she asked, flicking her hair from her face in girlish TV commercial slo-mo.
A couple of the women look at me, and I mouth “False!”
They smile and take the subtle clue and get the answer
right.
It’s hot outside when I get there. But the air doesn’t smell
like urine and death.
That Crosby, Stills and Nash song still played in my pained-by-melancholy head as I put my dead brother's hand-honed walking cane on the passenger side of the Saab.
I stared back toward the front door of the nursing home and thought, briefly, about how much fun and for how many years Jerry and I ran free, as News Brothers. Doing great journalism of the type that no longer exists in this mother-clicking era.
I am sorry
Sometimes it hurts so badly I must cry out loud
I am lonely
Doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo
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