Once my future was shiny as the seat of my pants are
today, till ol’ mother luck and all her daughters started ducking me.
Twenty-plus years ago, I was walking down Music City Row
with my friend Kris Kristofferson when I asked him if he meant to use an “f”
instead of a “d” on “ducking me” in his song “I May Smoke Too Much.”
The answer depends on how and to whom I’m telling the story.
Anyway, that was one of my anthems for decades, and my pal
Jerry Manley and I – with or without audience (generally without) – would crank
up that song on my record machine, put our arms over each other’s shoulders and
sing.
And I may smoke too much, drink too much
Every blessed thing too much
It's a low-down life, but it ain't gonna pass me by….
It pretty much justified our lifestyle and our choices, good
or bad and generally hoping no one got hurt, back in the 1970s and 1980s and
even into the ‘90s.
The song, by the way, is from Spooky Ladies Sideshow,
a 1974 commercial flop, perhaps, but after The Silver-Tongued Devil and I,
it likely is the Kris album I most played and pledged my allegiance to during
my formative years and their sorry decline in the 17 years since I was “bought
out” by what then was a newspaper. The armed guards, who loved me, helped me
carry my stuff to my old Saab.
In these dispatches, I know it always seems as if Jerry and I rode through this life together. But there was a lonesome, for me, gap. After I was “retired” – I’d worked as Jerry’s night cops reporter for most of a year as the “newspaper” tried to force me to quit – I didn’t hear from him for most of the next four years. I really had been his hero because of my writing and my less-than-retiring professional behavior. It's OK, though. He was still clinging to his job, and I think he was afraid that my rather eccentric persona and truthful and profound retelling of my cruel demise might rub off on him. He finally understood my bitterness when they called him at the annual Manley family reunion, cookout and cousins-are-OK-mates gathering in Lewisburg to tell him never to return to the newspaper.
I ought to note I hardly heard from anyone at the paper
during that era. Peter Cooper and I
spoke regularly, daily even, as he made the transition from the newspaper to Country Music
Hall of Fame high-staff. I did feel let
down by some folks, but I had other friends with whom I spoke regularly, like Clarksville's reformed radio newsman/electric company PR guy Scott “Badger”
Shelton and Hopkinsville newspaper outcast/political insider Rob “Death” Dollar.
Peter and Badger long ago joined my top-heavy roster of dead
friends. Rob and I stay in touch, though. There are a few others, some
newspaper homicides, who I hear from, and I relish. It delighted me when
then-food-writer Jim Myers would take me out to lunch so he could write his
restaurant reviews and assure himself I was OK. He eventually got fucked as
well.
Well, back to smoking too much and the like: For context, I
should note that I began worshiping (with a soft “w”) Kris in the summer of
1971, when I first played Silver-Tongued Devil and I. When I got back to
school that August, I bought the whole catalog, ordering them at a store in
Ames, Iowa, where they also sold sleds, candy bars and records. A friend of
mine, a Black Panther, smoked pot in the apartment above the next building. He had a beautiful girlfriend, and hemp-woven
rolling papers cost less than a buck a pack at the tobacco and cigar store at
the corner at Welch and Lincoln Way. Iowa-grown pot, I am told, was $12 a lid
(that’s an ounce). Many farmers supplemented their income by growing it between
cornrows. Again, this is simple hearsay to me. Oh, and simple possession was a $5 fine, they say.
The other albums at that point were Kris Kristofferson (retitled
Me and Bobby McGee after his lover Janis Joplin choked that out as a
major crossover hit before dying with a needle in her arm) and Border Lord.
It probably says something about me that when I had a young woman (always
innocently) up in my dorm room, I would put those three albums on the
changer. Other fellas may have played
Elton John or Paul “Love is Blue” Mauriat or even Sinatra. Me, I played songs
about busted love, broken promises, death and beer.
I was thinking about Kris’ impact on my life and how Jerry
and I had a mutual affinity for him, to the point that we learned the lyrics to
just about all of the songs of the guy who is now my friend. We would sing
them, damn the tomatoes, full speed ahead, when we were properly lubricated or lustily
encouraged. Hell, we may have just been driving down the street, smiling at
every girl we meet, and we’d sing about cigarettes, beer and loosened ribbons.
Smoking too much and drinking too much were sports in which
we gladly participated, perhaps to the point that Jerry now is in the loony bin
in a nursing home near my house.
Well, that’s not fair. It’s a pretty nice place, a nursing
home where most of the residents are just old and can’t properly care for
themselves. My pal, Stockton, who spent
his life at Reelfoot Lake before retiring to this nursing home a decade ago, is
a prime example. He’s a good guy, and he’s never to be seen without Tennessee
Vols shirts, pants, hats, jackets or whatever. I like the guy, and he loves
this nursing home, encourages me to give it a try. Tells me the food is good and the women are better.
I try to say hello to him on every visit. He’s in the sane
people’s lunchroom or perhaps watching “I Love Lucy” on one of the TVs in the
common space. “I hate this fucking
show,” he’ll snarl. But the residents’ consensus is generally that this is the
show to watch, because it reminds them of their youth. I buy that reasoning, but I wish “77 Sunset
Strip” was regularly broadcast on cable. Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb.
Of course, even the most disreputable nursing home would be
better in my mind than Stockton’s beloved Reelfoot Lake. I’m not a fan of that
place created when an earthquake fucked with a river or whatever the old ghost story.
It’s a great place to see bald eagles, but I’ve got them in my neighborhood.
And I can live without water snakes and West Tennessee.
A long, strange sidetrack there, but I’m just now – at this
writing -- cooling off from my regular visit to my friend Jerry, aka “Chuckles
News Brother” (a nickname he hates, but he should have spoken up when Rob
Dollar and I were naming The News Brothers in the slim, shady summer of 1982.)
I (“Flapjacks News Brother”) long-ago altered my lifestyle.
I didn’t want to die (I can’t figure out why, though), so the all-night
drinking and smoking pretty much were stopped, cold turkey. Alcohol, save for an occasional holiday
sampling, when I was 40 or so, cigarettes in the year 2000.
When I’m sitting with Jerry in the urine-flavored air of his
86-degree room, I wonder how come he’s trapped inside his head and apparently
only occasionally allowed to peek out; while my oft-concussed (from football,
fistfights and car wrecks) head still spews out thoughts, some inappropriate
and ungentlemanly. Most kind and compassionate, which is my goal.
Jerry didn’t have much to say on this visit, when I
interrupted him as he walked the long hall of the Memory Care Ward. That’s the
section of the nursing home that is double-locked and sort of guarded, where
Jerry, his roommate Bob/Milford, the guy who always wears a Vanderbilt
sweatshirt and others whose names I don’t know always are glad to see me. They
extend their hands, slap me on the back and offer up howdies. I’ve never been as popular as I am among the
cognitively deficient.
“It’s so good to see you,” said Vicki, the nurse who took
Jerry’s blood-sugar just before lunch. “I want to thank you for visiting us.”
I ask if there are many visitors from outside the world of
mental make-believe and near-comatose role-playing where she cares for these
beautiful and sometimes blank residents.
“No,” she says. “That’s why we’re always glad to see you.”
The fact my gimpy presence, guided by a thick walking cane
made for me by my recently dead brother, makes a difference in many lives gives
me something to smile about.
After I interrupt his walk, Jerry and I scamper down the
hallway to his room. “Scamper?” Hah, the last time I scampered was 5 a.m. Sunday
in the early 1970s, when my friends and I bolted on our bill at a truck stop on
U.S. 30 somewhere in Iowa. Jerry tells me he’s hungry. It’s quite a while until
lunch, and he’s glad to see me.
He plops down in his recliner, next to the bed whose frame
has been replaced after the old one broke – Jerry blames Bob – more than a week
ago. For a while just the mattress and box springs sat on the floor. Jerry
didn’t even notice at first that it was a far greater distance to fall at
bedtime than it used to be.
The new frame, though, only lifts the bed a bit, perhaps 8
inches, a few less than the busted frame.
“This isn’t much better than sleeping on the floor,” he
says, when I say how glad I am that he’s got a bed frame again.
I’d actually been hoping he’d sit on his bed, so I wouldn’t
have to use the other recliner, ostensibly Milford/Bob’s recliner, that only a
week ago bore a dark, brown stain most likely from one of these guys not making
it to the bathroom 6 feet away.
I touched that stain, to make sure it was dry, last week.
But the aroma -- coupled with the heat in the room, these crazy bastards keep
it in the 80s, and the nurses crank it to 86 on bath days – turned my stomach
and reinforced my knowledge that the only one getting out of this room alive is
me.
I sat down on the brown stain again on this visit, though --reminding
myself that these shorts and my boxers were going in the laundry when I got
home -- so I could hand-feed my friend.
First comes the Diet SunDrop bottle. Sometimes when I get here, I cannot open the
bottle. I have bad arthritis in my hands. I have started opening them as soon
as I pay for them at Quincy’s Shell Station, where I top off my tank and buy treats
for Jerry. If I can’t budge the bottle top, Quincy is glad to help. I then
hand-tighten so they don’t spill while I’m finishing my delivery to the
compound of cognitive collapse.
A pointless documentary about stones or dirt or oil or
dinosaurs or Mars blasts from the TV.
Rather than ask that it be turned down -- Jerry does not know how to use
the remote control – I raise my voice to a scream worthy of an alley in an
Italian ghetto. I can say that because my dad was raised in an Italian ghetto,
and my now-dead brother, Eric, and I would play in those streets when we were
kids. We tossed meatballs around and
learned how to swear in Italian. Seldom did we pull out our six-inch razors.
“Seen anybody lately?” I ask Jerry.
He looks at me and nods in my direction. “You, man.”
Sometimes I am not sure he remembers my name, as he refers
to me as “man.” That is the way we always conversed in our now-dead primes. But
nowadays I call him “Jerry,” to remind him who he is. I think he appreciates
the effort.
“John Staed came by,” he adds, of a mutual friend who has
not made it by. As noted in prior transmissions, Jerry thinks John “Street News
Brother” Staed has come by once, and it’s always “recently,” no matter the
season.
“We didn’t have much to talk about though. Not much in
common.”
I mention that his hair and beard look trimmed (as opposed
to mine), and he looks at me as if I’ve insulted him.
“Really?” he says. “I didn’t know that. My sister comes by
to trim it.”
He has told me other times that a staffer at the nursing
homes does his hair and beard trims or that his daughter does.
“I don’t know much. Where I am. Where I been.”
I give him basic information that he’s in Brentwood, on
which street, etc., in a nursing home and that it’s pretty close to where my
Mom and Dad lived on the southern tip of Nashville. In the 1980s, when I was
giving my life a necessary “restart” in order to avoid suicide, I lived with my
parents for a year or so. I commuted to Clarksville for a long time and then
moved to The Nashville Banner (a really good local newspaper and a far
cry from the website that now uses its name but has nothing to do with anyone
who was there when it was shuttered about 26 years ago.)
Jerry was a frequent visitor to my folks’ house, because Dad
had a pool, and the booze was always free.
A time or two he brought along one of his wives who didn’t think farting
in the pool was funny. It was a Lewisburg
bubble bath.
“So, your sister came by?” I ask, inspired by his tale about
the hair trim, etc.
“I can’t remember,” he says.
“How about your daughter?” I ask.
“No, she doesn’t come here, but, you know, I’d kinda like to
see her.”
I don’t know if she’s been here or not. Jerry wouldn’t
remember, regardless. From what I gather, she has, at least to take him to
medical appointments he doesn’t know occurred.
Jerry’s been using the Diet SunDrop to wash down the two
packages of Ritz peanut butter crackers I brought him.
“Man, these are good. I wish I had more.”
I tell him I’ll bring more next time, but he shakes off that
suggestion as he pats his 250-pound belly.
“You ever see a doctor?” I ask. “Does anyone tell you what
your condition is?”
He looks at the stupid documentary on TV while wiggling his feet
and shaking his head. “No. Never been out of here,” he says.
“Have you been diagnosed with dementia or anything else?” I
ask.
“No. I just can’t remember anything. I think I’m forgetful. Can't remember, though.”
Roomie Milford/Bob comes into the room and plops down on Jerry’s
bed, rather than his own. I offer him his recliner, and he just clicks his
false teeth and stares at Jerry.
It’s almost noon, and I realize that Milford/Bob has come to
tell Jerry it’s time for lunch. They sit at the same table and stare into the
same space together during meals.
Jerry excuses himself to use the restroom, and Milford/Bob
continues to click his teeth.
“You raised horses before you came here?” I say, something I
know is true because equine contest ribbons decorate the room.
He stops clicking long enough to say “Yes.”
“You were really good at it,” I say, and he says “Yes”
again, then settles back down on Jerry’s bed clicking his teeth. Conversation
obviously over.
Jerry gets done with his bodily chore, and the three of us
begin our way down to the lunchroom.
“Jerry, I need to give you a blood test before you eat,”
says Nurse Vicki, a kind woman who spends her life among these nearly departed.
Jerry asks me not to leave yet, so I stand there when she
stabs his finger and looks at the test results.
“It’s 247,” she says, a tad of concern. “That means I’m
going to have to give you four shots of insulin before you can eat.’’
Of course, I don’t know how much my treats have contributed
to the reading, but according to the computer in my phone, that is in a
high-risk number for diabetic ketoacidosis. The aim is to be around 180.
Anyway, this apparently is pretty normal for Jerry. I guess
my contraband might be a factor, but the nurses all know I sneak this stuff in,
and they wink at me. Having a friend who
administers crackers, soda and love is better than having no one, they reckon.
No one gets out of here alive.
And, as Nurse Vicki says, most of these people have no one.
That’s why they all brighten to see me.
As Jerry heads to his table, Vicki lets me through the
security door and urges me to come again soon. Crackers, Diet SunDrop and all,
it is inferred.
Women in wheelchairs fill the hallway, where a lovely young
social worker is asking questions about taking tea at 3 and other errors among
the social graces. I don’t pay much attention, although the women seem
all-too-glad that I’ve arrived and enjoy it as I slowly pass through their cluster trailing a faint dose of stale testosterone.
When I get to the front door, I notice two cars are being
unpacked. I open the front door for a man who is carrying an old lamp and a
brand-new Target lampshade. Others are carrying clothes and incidentals.
A nursing home administrator is telling the family that
she’ll personally make sure Granny’s well taken care of.
By the time I make it to my old Saab, the two cars have
departed, leaving Granny to fight for survival in this facility.
I sit in my car for a second and remember when, 40 years
ago, Jerry and I stood, laughing and drinking and swearing and singing “It’s a
lowdown life, but it ain’t gonna pass me by.”
“It pretty much has, Champo,” I say to the old man who is me, wishing my parents still lived to the left, just down the road, and I could go use their swimming pool and their vodka and play with their dog, Flapjacks, who I rescued outside the Royal York Hotel in Clarksville at 2 a.m. one cold day.
Old Mother Luck's been ducking me for a long, damn time, though. So I turn right and go to the grocery store.
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