A few phone calls with a woman who used to "Dream. Dream-dream-dream" that her son, Donnie, would visit his old, black room

Margaret Everly used to call me, complaining about her sons.

I think Phil was in Los Angeles, hanging out with Warren Zevon, a healthy enough pursuit that I wish I'd been able to enjoy.

But Don was here in Nashville and in Kentucky.

A former confidante of both Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, he was hanging out at Brown's Diner, where he obviously enjoyed the hamburgers. That's the only place, other than on the stage, that I ever saw him.

But, according to Mrs. Everly, either Don or Phil never visited her. She just said "my son hasn't visited" or somesuch.

Since Phil was not around, as he was getting his "shit fucked up," as Zevon would say, or hanging with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (again, something I'd enjoy), I guess it must have been Don.

Her house was a few blocks from my own, although in a slightly more upscale corner of the neighborhood.

"I just don't know why he doesn't come home," she said. "I kept his room like he had it. It's all painted black..... If he's not coming home, I think I'll get it painted."

Again, it must have been Don's room. According to published stories, he'd enjoyed LSD with Jimi and others. I believe she told me there were posters all over the walls and ceiling of the black room.

The quotes and recollections are hazy and paraphrased, as I wasn't taking notes. She simply was calling to see if I could get her son to visit. And nothing grabs my heart like a distressed mom.

I never accomplished that task, getting little Donnie to go home. I tried, I just couldn't track him down.

But I'm sure Don did, on his own, finally visit his mother..

Actually, now that I think about it, the first time I spoke with her, Nashville Banner icon Bob Battle, who knew everybody, switched her over to me.

"This is the mother of The Everly Brothers,'' Bob said. "Maybe you can help her."

She called several times for nice chats. She did invite me over to see the room, but by the time I decided to do that, the number I had no longer was in service. I imagine the room had been painted and the house sold.

Now both the boys are gone, after Don's death Saturday.

Margaret survives, however.

And man, I loved the music of The Everly Brothers. Bye-Bye Happiness.

Thank you for the phone calls, Mrs. Everly.

Boys, thanks for the tunes.

Tom T. Hall's death really pisses me off, but maybe he's with Miss Dixie now. Thanks for the friendship and love of two great people

 

Tom T. Hall's death pisses me off.

Two of the people who made me feel most at home in Nashville were Tom T. Hall and his wondrous wife, Dixie, aka "Miss Dixie."

Dixie died in 2015. Her heart was mighty and we loved each other.

Tom T. died today at age 85.

He was my friend.

They both welcomed me into their home. Life was lonely for Tom T. in recent years. So much so that on a few occasions, he even invited me up to Fox Hollow for some coffee and bullshitting.

We talked of books -- he liked mine and I cherish his -- and music. His music. His verbal pictures of blue-collar life and yearning and disappointment and occasional triumph are some of the very best words ever put together by a songwriter, country or otherwise.

The last time we shared coffee together was a snowy, early spring day, if I remember correctly.

He told me that he sure liked a book I'd written -- "Shoebox Full of Toads: Farewell to Mom" -- a lot and he asked me to sign it.

"God damn, that's a sad book. Good. Real good. I know you didn't write it to make money. It's just one of those things you wrote just because you had to, wasn't it?" he said. "I know how that goes."

Sometime on our coffee sipping day, he looked over his cup and said "Tim, why don't people write letters anymore?"

I shrugged.

First thing I did when I got home was write him a long letter of thanks, for his hospitality, an apology for taking up so much of his time and a mention of how much I loved and missed his wonderful wife.

If things are as we are taught, then Tom T. and Dixie are together again. That's a great thought for me, as I loved them both.

I don't know what else to say tonight other than I was appalled that the local news stations didn't lead with Tom T.'s death.

It was like the fourth or fifth story, a simple one-minute, easy-way-out piece of so-called journalism.

Tom T. Hall was a damn nice guy who made magic with his words.

Largely forgotten in recent years, he really didn't mind it.

He was a great man, who made a huge impact on country music. I appreciate his friendship.

And his death, as noted earlier, really pisses me off.

"Junior Birdman" plays in my head as I battle sadness with Camp Spikehorn, Scotch with Marc, Topsy and oil-stained feet on a country road

 I learned today that a cousin, who I love like a brother, is in the fight for his life up in the Detroit area. 

I don't need to go into details, other than the fact I left him a slightly profane message on his answering machine, because he is unable to speak clearly because of some irritation in his mouth, apparently caused by his treatments. I'm a newspaperman, so profanity flows naturally.

Since I couldn't talk with him, I talked into the machine about the summers he and his brother spent with Eric, me and my mom and dad. And I said that he better get feeling better because the bus was getting ready to take us out to Camp Spikehorn, outside Grand Rapids. 

I know none of that makes much sense to anyone but me. 

But my Champ cousins and my brother and I grew up together, at Camp Spikehorn or running down the dunes over near Holland, Michigan. Or the one Thanksgiving when we all were outside my grandparents' (George and Bea Champ's) house at Walnut Lake and a deer hunter shot into a tree near me. I survived. In fact, we thought it was kinda cool.   I spoke with my cousin a few weeks ago. The diagnosis was dire, but he was counting on months, years even. Now they are talking about hospice. He'll be 72 in September.  He was baby-sitting his grandchildren when we spoke.

Oh yeah, and then there was the beach at Walnut Lake. We'd walk on the trail through the swamp from the Champ house and across the dirt roads, that had been sprayed with black oil to keep the dust down. 

We spent our summers with black soles on our feet, either from going to the lake or just across Sunnycrest to harvest wild blackberries in the field.  

And the dog, Topsy, my grandparents' old hound, who would follow us through the woods and back. Sometimes, by the time she got home, she smelled of the dead fish she'd rolled on near the beach. We probably didn't smell so good ourselves.

It's been a lot of decades since Camp Spikehorn and the beach at Walnut Lake. But in my life I've never been happier than those days, before life began catching up with me. 

My cousin, Marc, and his brother, Jeff, not only mean everything to me, they are my connections with my early, happier life, my "Wonder Years" or whatever. And their sister, Michelle, too, though she was older and not as much around us as the boys were.

Their dad, my Uncle Joe, had his lungs turned into so much Swiss cheese by Nazi flamethrowers in the Battle of the Bulge. For a long time, my mom, his sister, and their folks didn't even know if he was alive. No officers came to the house to say he was dead. But if he was alive, nobody had kept good track of him.

But he was healing, slowly, in a British hospital. He came home mortally wounded into a decade-long death dance. Yet he laughed and hugged. He was a great and loving man.

When I was a kid, Uncle Joe was my hero. I named my son after him. Uncle Joe also scared me, as on the days of family gatherings out there in the small house in the woods at Walnut Lake, he'd have to go into my grandpa's bedroom, where Grandpa Champ would work the old hand-pump oxygen machine in an attempt to keep Joe alive.

Uncle Joe died long, long ago.  I remember when my mother got the phone call in Grand Rapids, telling her that her beloved brother had finally succumbed to Hitler's war machine.  I never saw her more grief-stricken as she wailed away at the telephone nook, by the reach-through between the stairs landing and the dining room.

She had been vacuuming the dining room when the call came.

I saw him in his casket, but my parents didn't think I was old enough for the funeral. Eric and I waited out the funeral and ate fresh tomatoes. No, that's not really a big deal, but it's true. I would rather eat fresh tomatoes than go to funerals now, but that's not proper death etiquette.

I probably ought to think this through more, turn it into some sort of formed writing. But I'm just typing from my heart right now. And it hurts.

It had been a bad day already, as I dealt with work issues.  My meeting with a boss was interrupted by a phone call I couldn't take, but I recognized the number. It could only be bad news. And I knew it had to be about Marc.

Tears crept into my eyes, which I rubbed, but continued my meeting. Had to. Gotta take care of my family and I love my job.

I focused on my boss and what he had to say to me, but I really didn't feel completely there. I knew that something had gone wrong with Marc in his battle with cancer.

And it had, as I found out when I talked to my own brother, Eric, and to our cousin Michelle.

I laughed a little bit in my soul, though, when I thought of the four of us, like brothers, riding the bus to Camp Spikehorn. Singing the "Junior Birdman" song, complete with the hand-motions. If you never did that, you are supposed to turn your hands upside down, forming upside-down goggles with fingers, as you sing along about the upside-down airman.

Marc and I served as bartenders once at an ill-fated family wedding. No details needed here, other than that the marriage didn't work, but the wine and Scotch really fueled the bartenders. My dad had provided the booze, and he wasn't stingy about quality. Marc and I relished Dad's choices so much that we each took a bottle with us back to Eric's apartment, where we drank the night away. And talked about Camp Spikehorn.  

Because of life, we haven't been together a lot since we were elementary school kids. 

Our parents all moved us around the country. 

There were occasional family get-togethers. Mostly at funerals, though.

I'm rambling here.

I can't say what will happen. It certainly looks bad. But I don't know if I've ever been around a more-upbeat guy than Marc. I'll never forget that smile, the hug, the fact we kissed each other on the lips, Mafia style, when we saw each other.

I've lost a lot of my friends to cancer. My parents are gone to disease and age. A cousin on the Ghianni side of the family, my beloved Ronnie Conte, died long ago because there was a congenital hole in his heart that finally caught up with him. Jim Kelly and some of the Buffalo Bills came to his visitation. But that's another story. 

Other "friends" decided that my politics, ethics and my general sense of fear and loathing mixed with mad laughter wasn't worth putting up with. I didn't need them, anyway. Ah, look at all the lonely people.

But I've kept going, knowing there were people in this world I loved and who loved me. Marc, Jeff, Michelle, Eric, Ronnie's brother Robbie. And, of course, my daughter, son and Suzanne. 

For me, well, this is a sad time. I'll be even more lonely one day, I hope not soon, because of this fucking cancer.

The laughter, the kisses on the lips, the Scotch and the hugs will be missed.

I told Eric, "it's that time in life when this shit begins to happen. We are old, brother."  

I guess we are.

I know that I feel old today when I think about this magnificent cousin who is fighting for his life.

I just hope he takes a moment to think about Walnut Lake. Topsy. Black-oil-covered soles. 

And those musical bus rides to Camp Spikehorn. "Up in the air, the junior birdman; up in the air upside dow-ow-own; up in the air, the junior birdman, keep your noses off the grou-ou-ound."

Uncle Sam is gone, leaving me in the "oldest" Ghianni generation with memories of Challenger, ET, cow tongue, Como bar and Santa Fe "snake"

 

It’s around here someplace, perhaps. But it’s always in my memories. Because of tumult in my house caused by the flood of a week-plus ago, there’s no way I’m going to start digging for old photos of the film and negative and slide kind.

And it may be gone. But I can picture it now. It’s my Uncle Sam Ghianni, almost 40 years ago. He and I had stopped to eat a nice plate of cow tongue at a Basque restaurant in the high desert of California the night before.

He had left a bit early from his job as an engineer on the Space Shuttle – he was working on Challenger at the time, and I was fortunate enough to walk through that doomed vehicle while it still was just a skeleton.

I’d driven his big, diesel-powered Oldsmobile down from Palmdale/Lancaster that day, parking for a while in Hollywood and then heading out to Universal Studios.    It wasn’t a theme park yet, though you could take a little boat ride through a circular pond where “the shark from ‘Jaws’” would pop up and growl. I’m not sure it was one of the dummy sharks used in the movie, but it was a little cool.

And, since it was a weekday, the primarily Japanese folks who joined me on the ride laughed and snapped pictures of the shark.

The big secret at Universal was, while we could wander among the sound stages, see demonstrations, visit the sets not being used, no one could go near the one big hangar-like studio building where Steven Spielberg was filming something called “ET.” Those letters were painted above the main door to the hangar, but tourists were not allowed to walk near.

Anyway, it was one of several trips I’ve made to Los Angeles and California over the years, going all the way back to my wandering hippie years, which included crashing on the floor of my uncle’s then-residence in Placentia, down in Orange County, for a few days. It was a needed respite, because I’d been on the road for a month in my old 1965 Falcon, sleeping on roadsides and campsites.

In New Mexico, a doctor I’d never met – Dr. Gutierrez – performed some minor surgery on my left leg. He didn’t charge me. The lobby was filled with Native Americans and I was apparently in what Huck Finn would call “Injun Territory.”

After New Mexico came about a month in Arizona, leading up to a long trip downhill – I turned the gas off in the old Falcon someplace near Flagstaff and put the Falcon in neutral and coasted downhill for about four hours.  Oh, occasionally, I had to turn the car on to get up a hill, but mostly, the Falcon was going downhill, finally running out of downhill slope someplace on the outskirts of a dirty little city named San Bernardino.  Now it’s a big city, by the way. And it’s still dirty.

Still, that trip was 50 years ago, and Wizard, a college friend guy who was along for the ride and none of the driving and who slept all day while the car was moving, and I rolled into Placentia and refreshed a few days, using my Uncle Sam’s shower, sleeping on the floor of his living room.

“Man, you guys smell,” he almost joked us when we first arrived.

That’s a long story and ends up with me having an Orange Julius while waiting for the taping to begin for The Johnny Carson Show. The stand was just across Alameda from the NBC Studios (at Alameda and Olive) in Burbank.  Being in the studio while Johnny did his schtick gave me almost the same kind of thrill I felt the first time I saw The Rolling Stones. Well, not really, but it was cool. David Carradine and Buddy Hackett were among the guests.

Enough on that trip, other than to say I tired of my car partner someplace near Fisherman’s Wharf, and we began the long drive home. It took about a week and a half, as we had stops. And since Wizard slept all the time, we eventually got to my old dorm at Iowa State, where we crashed for a few days. While Wizard slept.

It was many years later when personal trauma led me to one night call my Uncle Sam from my apartment in Clarksville, Tennessee. I was being spiritually suffocated, but no need to go into that here.  I needed a break. I asked if he’d mind if I flew out to California to visit him for a few days while he worked at Edward’s Air Force Base and the Space Shuttle Program.

It was a great trip, and, usually I’d drive him to work sometime around 5 a.m. and then have the car for the day. I explored mountains and beaches and bars, finally picking him up when the workday ended. Most evenings we stopped at a little Mexican diner where we had massive chimichanga plates and a beer or maybe more. We laughed. He introduced me to other space engineers – this was “their joint” – and, well, I had a helluva time.

One night, he decided that instead of the diner, we’d go for a ride out on the blue highways through the high desert, which found us at near sunset in the midst of Basque country, where the hills were filled with sheep and shepherds.

“I was here once before,” he said. “I think you’ll like it. You ever eat cow tongue?”

That’s where, while Spanish/Basque musicians played, we ate big plates of cow tongue. Only time I’ve ever feasted on one of those, but it was good and we washed it down with Basque wine of some suspicious vintage.

Enough on that. The next day, he was off from work during daylight, going in at night, I think. So we again went out into the desert, this time to a mountain along the Santa Fe rail line. He thought I’d like to see this mechanical marvel, which had a train looped several times around and through the mountain as it rose up from the desert floor.  That’s where the picture I’ve not found comes in that I took of my beloved Uncle Sam – everyone else called him Uncle Johnny, even though his name was Sam (aka Sabatino or Samuel) -- as he stood in front of that mountain with the train snaking around it.

The next day we drove through the beach towns outside of L.A., including Manhattan Beach, where he at one time had a rib joint. He went broke, but he still bragged about his rib sauce and expertise whenever that topic came up.

In the years since, Sam finally retired, he and Ginnie eventually moving to Mountain View, Arkansas. We actually saw him fairly frequently, as he would come over to visit his big brother, my dad, Em J. Ghianni, 10 years his senior.

And, for decades now, Sam has been there for every funeral, wedding (some had more than one, you know) and gathering. He also came over to nurse his big brother as my dad’s health began what eventually was a long descent toward death in 2019.  He’d stay with his big brother for a week or two, as the two sipped scotch, ate fruit and cheese and talked about growing up in Buffalo, New York.

My brother, Eric, and I always figured we’d go over to see him in Mountain View sometime after my dad died. My wife, Suzanne, and I shared similar plans for a year ago, scrapped because of the Trump virus.

Joking. COVID-19. I shouldn’t joke about Trump, as my uncle and I had disagreements about that candidate and president, and we avoided conflict. To me, Trump was and is a corrupt thief, misogynist, racist, liar and treason-monger. My Uncle Sam, who had been an activist in Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign (that ended thanks to Sirhan Sirhan in the hotel kitchen), had grown conservative.

He liked Trump. I despised the asshole of a president. And we agreed to disagree. I think only once did he object, publicly, to one of my rare political posts on Facebook.

I did disagree completely with his own, more-frequent, political posts. But then we’d talk on the phone – I had to remind him he was the head of the Ghianni family, the last one left of the five children of Alfina and Sabatino Ghianni.  Johnny died as a kid. Frances, Rita and my dad all lived fuller lives. My Uncle Al Conte, my own godfather, who was Fran’s husband, also was dead.

So, I told Uncle Sam that since my dad was gone and he was the last one left, he was sort of “The Godfather” of the Ghianni family.  He could issue offers we couldn’t refuse, though none of us wanted to sleep with the fishes.

He laughed, but he took the role seriously, calling in for quick checks on everybody. Not long conversations, but they always ended with “I love you” on both ends of the line. “Talk again soon.”

The last three or four weeks I’d been trying to get in touch with Uncle Sam, leaving messages on his phone. I told him I was just checking in, and I’d call again soon.

The last message I left was me wishing him a “Happy Easter. … I hope you are cooking ribs at church (or something like that),” I said in the voice mail.

“I’ll call you again in a few days. I love you. We all love you and Ginnie.”

I always told him in those messages that he could call me back if he wanted to, but I’d get him soon, regardless.

Well, I don’t know if he heard that Easter message.

Last Thursday, April 1, he went for his first COVID shot.  I don’t know if that had anything to do with the fact that basically he shut down hours after Moderna went into his arm.

He had a lot of health difficulties, so there likely is no correlation to the shot, although he could have had a bad reaction that triggered some of his other woes with fatal fury.

Ginnie got him to the hospital and he was improving some until Tuesday. He was on full-on oxygen, but he seemed to be improving.

 The techs were wheeling him down for an X-ray to make sure he didn’t have pneumonia when he coded. I’m sure he knew the techs, since one of his pastimes was as a hospital volunteer. He also was like the No. 1 congregant, the head Columbian or head of Knights of Columbus, or whatever at the small Catholic Church in Mountain View.

There was a “DNR” in his living will.  He just had turned 88 years old.

That whole generation of Ghiannis is now gone. My dad, the oldest, was born shortly after Alfina and Sabatino were processed through Ellis Island.

It’s odd to me now, after 69 years, to realize that I am the last generation left. My cousin Robbie Conte (Fran and Al’s kid) and my brother Eric.

That’s it. Just the three of us who gathered around the Easter table in the duplex walk-up on Folger Street, just around the corner from the Como bar, really one of those famed Italian coffeehouses, I believe, where plans were hatched.

Grandpa Ghianni used to take me there. He’d have whiskey. Me, ginger ale. I’m sure Rob, his late brother Ronnie and Eric were there, too.

Now as a member of the oldest generation of Ghianni family members, I’ll have to make sure that my kids know enough to realize that their family came here seeking the American Dream. They were, literally, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of the teeming shores of Italy.

They achieved those dreams, of course. All of that generation achieved far beyond what they could have in the mountain villages over the Adriatic.

Maybe someday, I’ll go to those villages to see if there are any Ghianni family members left, some who perhaps have heard stories of Sabatino and Alfina. Or who were there when my dad, Emilio, and his bride, Dot, visited maybe 40 years ago.

I could tell them all about my experiences, my family, my father. Rita. Fran. Uncle Sam. Maybe throw in an anecdote about my Uncle Al Conte, who was the nicest human being I ever met.

I love my family. I miss all of those people.

Uncle Sam is dead now.

I guess that makes my brother Eric the don, the head of the family.  I’m sure he’ll wear that mantle well, as long as he can fulfill his duties in sweatpants. Long story, there, but true.

This “column’’ was written, stream-of-consciousness style, in the hour or so after I had a long conversation with Ginnie. So there may be errors of style, none of substance.  And none of the heart.

“My uncle was a great guy,” I told Ginnie.  And, in unison almost, we said “he was a kind person.”

What a drag it is gettin’ old, a friend of mine once sang, as his own childhood pal played the guitar.

 

  

   

   

Death of G's Pancake House is sort of an obituary on some damn nice nights. And damn the flood

 

 

I wasn’t made for these times.

Oh, I’m not talking about the flood of 2021, which for the second time in 11 years, has altered my lifestyle.

Not that my lifestyle is all that great, I suppose, but I do take for granted things like dry shoes, floors that don’t bubble and a good night’s sleep. All of those things vanished at about 1 a.m. Sunday, when 8 inches of rain fell on my nice, fairly pastoral, little section of Nashville.

Within moments, it seemed, water from the rainfall – it had been raining for three days, really and the ground was saturated – snuck into my basement. It spread quickly. And for the last three days now, we’ve been cleaning up, drying out, praying for no rain for awhile and dealing with insurance (Allstate does not return calls or show much compassion… and my contractor, who is going to try to figure out a way for this not to happen again.

Since the last flood I survived was 11 years ago, well, if that cycle continues, I’ll be 80 next time or just a fistful of forgotten ashes. In either case I don’t want to go through this crap again.

But really what I’m lamenting today is that one of my life’s favorite places, a greasy little all-night pancake and coffee joint, on Riverside Drive in Clarksville, Tennessee, is closing.

If you know me or have read anything by me over the years, you may know about G’s Pancake House.

Forty years ago, and for a few years on either side of that mark, it was a 2 a.m. Sunday destination for me and my best friends, fellas with names like Badger and Death and Chuckles and Flash. The Stranger made it occasionally. Tony Durr, occasionally. Those last two, like the pancake house, are dead.

Well, Badger didn’t make it much back then, as he wasn’t a newspaperman – which is all I ever wanted to be until the corporate bastards took it from me and sent me out into a world where no one hired 56-year-old men who refused to backstab to stay on the right side of corporate politics.

But you’ve read that story before (and it is available in book form). This little essay is about G’s Pancake House.

When Jerry and Rob and I finished up the Sunday Leaf-Chronicle newspaper in Clarksville, we’d generally go to a little place called “Camelot” to let the local cops try to loosen us with good Scots whiskey and where DJ Jimmy in the Morning lay face-down on the front table.  He’d often raise his head long enough to buy us a round.

Often Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Patterson – a foil during working hours, but a helluva good friend when he had his pistols packed in the trunk of his car – was the most generous guy when it came to buying drinks. Since he was pumping us to see what we knew, perhaps he turned in the receipts to Sheriff Billy Smith.

We pumped Eddie and the other 15 or so cops and deputies who joined in the all-night frivolity among a mix of college students (not that many, really, as this was a pretty rough bar, the kind where a dispute over arm-wrestling might send a fellow through the air and landing on a table, which would break.).

We would applaud and hope it didn’t happen to us. There were a few members of the nearby 101st Airborne as well.  

They were hoping not to get into fatal wrecks on Fort Campbell Boulevard while returning to post. My publisher had decided that there were so many of those dead GIs littering the sides of our roads, we shouldn’t report them anymore. Bad for city image.

That’s beside the point in this story, which is about the closing of G’s Pancake House. It wasn’t just those of us who stayed out all night who ended up at G’s.

Sometimes, other, less-desperate and desolate folks, would join us if we went right after work, at midnight or 1 a.m., on either a Friday or Saturday. There is a “famous” picture of me holding court with a bunch of newspapermen late on one Good Friday.  We broke flapjacks and drank coffee, and, of course, prayed over these sacramental elements.

Anyway, there really were countless nights at G’s. It’s where I got my name, still valid among many of my old friends, or at least the ones still alive (a diminishing breed) of “Flapjacks.” We all had names. Dumbo. Flash. Chuckles. Death. StrawBilly. Street. Larry (too stiff a butt for a nickname, but a good guy nonetheless). If our friend, Scott Shelton, a radio newsman was with us, his nickname was Badger.

I moved out of Clarksville back in the very late 1980s, on the cusp of the 1990s. I didn’t go back to G’s often in the last three decades.

There were a few, perhaps even a dozen, gatherings of the so-called “News Brothers” (again, see the book) there over the years.

For many years, we held an annual reunion in Clarksville. Those pretty much stopped when Scott died.

Oh, he wasn’t one for all-night frivolity. He was too busy at home with his wife, Elise, or admiring his Beatles statues. Me, I was trying to stay away from home for much of that time back then in what was a different life of melancholy and asking “Why?”

Our gatherings generally would be at G’s. The last one actually came after Scott died. Following his funeral, all of us who didn’t have to beat it back to Nashville, Hoptown or New York City (none of us were from New  York City), ended up for a three-hour wake of sorts. Again, flapjacks and “Flapjacks,” with his best friends.

Laughing about Badger and about our old times together.  I remember Frank “Wuhm” White, an occasional News Brother, telling me on that afternoon nine years ago that I really hadn’t changed over the years.

I guess I hadn’t. Still haven’t. Which, as my old friend the Pilgrim said, is a blessing and a curse, but the goin’ up really has been worth the coming down.

Anyway, enough about me and my meanderings. This is supposed to be about the death of a pancake house.

One of my former bosses, Dee Boaz, sent me a link to a Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle story today that says that G’s is shutting down after business ends Friday.

G’s Pancake House was begun in 1972 in the Riverside Drive location, according to the little feature story.

This week, the owner decided to close the restaurant begun by her father. “On Friday, the original location of G'S Pancake House at 803 South Riverside Drive will serve its final charbroiled burgers, fried catfish, steak and potatoes and of course, G’S Super Breakfast with pancakes,” according to the story by reporter Gary Estwick.

I spent the best part of my life in Clarksville, as far as I can remember. Although my search for personal happiness and sobriety came here in Nashville, beginning in 1988. So I don’t know the reporter, and I do know that the newspaper is nothing like it used to be.

No crazy associate editor, chain-smoking, wearing shades and a Hawaiian shirt and urging everyone to laugh, even as we put together stories about teenage killers, the Full Moon Rapist (I made up that moniker) and Manson-style killings. And, of course, the tragic saga of Chico the Monkey.  

What once was a huge and historic building housing the oldest newspaper in Tennessee now is the D.A.’s office. I think the newspaper is put out in a closet. I know the printing presses are long gone and the pathetic little product (not blaming the reporters here, but corporate greed) is printed, I believe, in Knoxville.

Or Louisville. Yeah, you really can get breaking news in a paper if you print it three hours away … another issue. Of course, it’s all about websites now. I wonder how many website stories are clipped out and put in family Bibles and Little League scrapbooks? They don’t even run free obituaries anymore. We used to hold the presses to make sure all the funeral homes in Clarksville and surrounding cities got their obits in to us. We’d type them up and typeset them. And it made families feel part of the newspaper.

Well, The Leaf-Chronicle did run sort of an obit on G’s, of course, this week.

And it hit me almost as hard as if a person I know had died. Like I noted earlier, the last gathering I call recall there was after Scott “Badger” Shelton’s funeral nine years ago.

The time before that was perhaps two months earlier. Scott’s wonderful wife, Elise, a long-time friend of mine, as well, had worked hard to get Scott to that year’s reunion of the News Brothers.

He was dripping with oxygen hoses and cancer death was in his eyes. But there also was a gleam of happiness. Sure, he knew his time was coming, way too soon. But he was there. At G’s. Eating flapjacks with his old buddy, Flapjacks, who used to drop in on Scott’s news programming decades before at WJZM Radio in Clarksville.

I’d drop in before I showed up for work at 5:30 a.m. or take a smoke break and walk over there to play with Badger and Jimmy in the Morning.

I should note that none of us took our work lightly, but journalism used to be a deadline-heavy occupation, filled with caffeine and nicotine, Scotch, beer, lies and sad truths.

When sane people were in their beds, thinking about how early to get up for church or for Junior’s soccer match, we were still at work.

When we got off, we needed a place to go to blow off the stress, to laugh. Yes, there was a lot of death and destruction with which we dealt. And there were gory photos we had to look at and size for the pages.

And sometimes when we saw those photographs, we just had to laugh.  Not out of disrespect, but to keep our sanity.

Well, sometimes I just have to write to blow off those stresses, like figuring out how to keep my house from flooding and which of the soggy stacks of old newspaper clippings should go in the trash or recycling bin and which can be saved. Not many, by the way.

As I said, being a newspaperman was all I ever wanted to do. I was not prepping for some horseshit P.R., 9-5, job.  I also loved my colleagues in the news business. I didn’t mind that people viewed me as a “free spirit” as long as they judged me factual and honorable and compassionate.

I also love, perhaps more than anyone else, the traditions of a newspaperman.  Hard-drinking is in my past, of course, but I sure as hell enjoyed it, after deadline, most nights. The smoking, cigarettes sending their trails of white up into the air of the newsroom or the Camelot or G’s Pancake House, also were of that profession, of that era. Of bygone times.

I’m decades past my G’s years. But it always has been reassuring to think about those time, those nights. That particular Good Friday. Christ you know it ain’t easy to be an old-fashioned newspaperman (or newspaperwoman) anymore.

In fact, I really think that these younger people, as good as they are, have missed out on the most fun and meaningful parts of that culture.

Like going through a half-pack of smokes and a short stack of flapjacks and maybe 12 cups of coffee while laughing into the night and waiting for dawn to break while having good newspaper fellowship at G’s Pancake House.

It’s closing.

I’m cleaning up from another flood.

Many of the folks mentioned in this story, from Chief Deputy Eddie Patterson to Scott Shelton and Jimmy in the Morning are gone.

The News Brothers are old and scattered.  Donald Trump is partly to blame for that, but that’s another long story.

I’ll never love a group of guys, collectively, as much as I loved the News Brothers.

And I never laughed into the night, after dealing with the horrors of reality and murder, as hard as I did at Camelot and G’s.

Camelot closed long ago.

Now G’s is going away.

I’m 69, not 30 or 35.

And I wasn’t made for these times.

Christ, you know it ain’t easy.

       

Big chill sets in on 'rolling team' as old friends say goodbye to Nard: Leonard Sandholm wrestled and laughed his way through a life filled with love

 You can’t always get what you want.

The plan was that I was going to go up to Ames, Iowa, on a fall weekend day to attend a game between the Iowa State University Cyclones and, I hoped, another good Big 12 football team.

Nard and I hashed this out as he drank a beer or two on the fourth level of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge one winter day.

It was a nasty day, and I really don’t like the modern, multiple-stacked-floor incarnation of the once low-slung bar where long ago I drank beer with Lefty, ET, Big Mon, whoever was playing the Opry that night.  That was back in the early 1970s, and I don’t need to go on about that here.

Leonard Sandholm, who was like a little brother to me in our college days, was passing through Nashville from his farm in Red Oak, Iowa. He and some of his crew from the farm, his seed company and maybe the bar/resort he owned down on a Missouri lake, were going to a farm convention of some sort down in, I think, Sarasota, Florida. Never know when a guy might get a good deal on a combine, I suppose.

Nard, as most of us called him -- though I often called him by Leonard, because I liked the sound of that full name -- and his crew were going to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Johnny Cash Museum, and other tourist sites during a two-night stop here…. Emphasis “going to go.”

I didn’t know he was coming, but he called me late on the Friday night he got into Nashville. He and his buddies/employees, who all were occupying one large room at one of our finer downtown hotels, had decided to wait until the Saturday to do their museum hopping.

Instead, Nard was calling me from the purple bar the tourists all seek out, because they don’t know any better. The drinking was underway.

I will have to say here that from the time I was maybe 17 up until the time I was in my late-30s, I was a world-class consumer of alcohol. And other things. And I had really earned my reputation as the guy who would and could go the farthest, the closest to the edge, toes on the ledge, during my college years.

“Grown up” in my 20s and 30s, I really didn’t need to change much, as I was a newspaperman, and such errant behavior was expected. Or at least a part of the stereotype.  Generally after-hours, of course.

But, as I got older and after I got married for the final time (she’s great and for some reason understands me) and we adopted our children, I mostly put alcohol away. That’s another story.

Anyway, on that winter Friday night when Nard called from Tootsie’s, I could tell by the hollering of his crew in the background that this wasn’t my place to be that night. Nard, who was sober while buying for his guys, understood that I should probably stay home that night. But he said he’d like to see me Saturday, before they were going to go to the museums and toured Music Row. Again, emphasis on the “going to go.”

Regardles, at about 10 or so on that Saturday morning, I parked my now 37-year-old Saab at Music City Center and walked the few blocks to Tootsie’s. The last time I’d actually been inside this bar was when I accompanied my friend, Kris Kristofferson and his wife, Lisa, to a ceremony in which club management unveiled a metal memorial, 18-inch-square bronze plate in the floor honoring Kris. Another long story.

Anyway, as usual, the joint was jammed with folks from Iowa, Upstate New York and Texas. And it was noisy with third-class country music. Nard had told me he didn’t know where they’d be, other than at Tootsie’s. And, he said, “I’ll recognize you, Timmy.” In college I was known as Champo, but Leonard liked to call me Tim or Timmy. Which makes sense, because those are two versions of my first name. (My mother called me “Timothy” when she was pissed.)

I knew I’d recognize Nard, too. I hadn’t seen him since the night after Ben Sorenson’s wedding. I only went to that one because I really needed to see my friends, who I knew all would be there, some participating in the nuptial celebration. A girl I loved but who had married someone else was singing at the wedding, so I wanted to see her, too. Again, that’s another long story.

That was in the late 1970s, I think. After the wedding, we all went to Tom Carpenter’s trailer in Ames – by “all,” I mean me, Carpy (since it was his place), Titzy (John Nitz), Jocko (Jim Mraz), maybe Captain Kirk. Perhaps Wizard, who had transformed into an asshole most of us didn’t like, though I had spent a few months bumming around the country with him back in 1973. It was OK, since he slept while I drove, so mostly it was me and coffee and cigarettes on the mountain ranges and dipping in the oceans, warm and cold from the Florida panhandle to the Big Sur. We did go to a taping of Johnny Carson, on which Buddy Hackett and David Carradine were guests, while in Burbank. We drank Orange Juliuses at a stand on Alameda Boulevard while waiting for the taping.

That’s another long story, so I’d better focus on Benjie’s wedding day.

Since there had been beer consumption before and after the wedding, we all had a pleasant hour or two ride to Ames. Sometime around 2 a.m. Sunday, a verbal fight erupted inside the trailer. I don’t remember who was fighting. Alcohol can spring and amplify anger, you know. I’ve always been a mellow fellow. Still, these were my friends, and it bothered me as the argument grew in volume and intensity. I was outside on a lawn chair and couldn’t stand all of the yelling. Like I say, I’m pretty much a peaceful fellow, unless someone I love is threatened or an angry pusher with a knife chases me after I messed up his deal. Another story.

I’ll leave that angry-in-the-trailer story there, pretty much, only to add that the next morning I awoke on the floor of the TV room on the seventh floor – where I had lived – of Larch Hall. There’s a long story here of how the police had given me my ride there (I wasn’t in trouble, I just didn't want the police to take me back to the trailer, so no one would get in trouble.) But we don’t need to go there here.

I’ve always been crazy, it’s kept me from going insane.

Anyway, cutting down to save the rest for my memoirs, I don’t think I saw Nard again until that day at Tootsie’s. Oh, we had communicated many times on the phone. And once he tried to get me when he and his family drove through my then-home of Clarksville, Tennessee, on the way to Florida, but I was working. With the birth of Facebook, though, we had begun fairly regular “how you doing? chats.

And, oh yeah, he did call me when my Uncle Moose (Red Oak farmer Steve Mainquist, three years ahead of me in school and a great man who had introduced me to Nard when the freshman arrived at Iowa State) died. And when Jocko’s ex-wife, Nola, died. 

But, on that day we sat at Tootsie’s, it was like we’d never been apart. Yes, he did recognize me. Told me I was a little thinner (I am overweight, some, because of age and gravity, but the beer gut is long gone). He had grown to the size of two Leonards, but that was OK. We recognized each other as soon as I took the top landing at Tootsie’s and embraced immediately. For what must have been five minutes. Or at least two. Whatever, we didn’t feel like letting go of each other.  He asked me if he could buy me a beer. I told him I’d start with a Diet Coke. He ordered me a beer anyway.

Probably $5 a glass. A lot more expensive than the 69-cents-a-six-pack stuff we used to favor back in our college days. I always kept a warm case of Wiedemann’s under my dorm cot just in case someone got thirsty and the weather turned bad. Or in case we needed a study break and Smokin’ Joe wasn’t around. That’s another story. Smokin’ Joe was never there on weekends, as his fiancee was in Cedar Rapids, where his parents lived next to the Czech National Cemetery.

Anyway, maybe some other day I’ll talk about Smokin’ Joe. He was a good guy. Grew up to become some sort of international lumber executive.

I’d only planned to be around Leonard for an hour or so at Tootsie's, because he and his friends were going to go see the museums, do the tourist bit, before leaving early the next morning for Sarasota.

Problem was that Leonard’s crew drank too much the night before. “They are back at the hotel, filling up the wastebaskets,” Leonard told me.   “They are going to rest a little while and we’ll go to the Hall of Fame later.”  (They never made it, by the way, and they left for Sarasota early the next morning. Leonard told me, later, that he'd come back sometime with his wife and see the museums. The best-laid plans, you know.)

We took our beers – by then, I also had a Diet Coke – with us out onto the balcony patio at Tootsie’s. It was cold, but we sat beneath one of those umbrella-like propane heater things and told stories. Well, they weren’t stories, really. They were recollections.

“There’s no way we wouldn’t have ended up in jail if we were going to college these days,” Nard said, with a smile. He’s probably right, here. Some among us did do jail time, anyway. Others of us bailed us out.

But it was harmless stuff as we went, as I coined it, “rolling” from Tork’s Pub all the way to Boone or even Des Moines, on weekends where we generally saw the dawn pass us while we still were on our way back to the dorm for a few hours of food and rest before doing it again.

On one of those early mornings, the bust of Old Man Hanson, the namesake of our dorm floor – we were in Hanson House – bounced off the driveway eight floors below (we were on the seventh residential floor, but there was a full floor for mailboxes and maintenance equipment below us). The bust was scuffed, but otherwise OK. All I was doing was testing his ability to fly.

We were good guys. The girls liked to crank up “You’re So Vain” when I walked, usually with Jocko, but sometimes with Nard, Titzy and Carpy, into parties where we’d not been invited. As Carly sang, we often watched ourselves gavotte. We were seldom invited, but it seemed like we were expected.  Just like at Tork’s, where when we arrived on Friday evenings, the whole tavern would grow quiet. Kind of like the bars in the movies when The Man With No Name comes in the door.

“There’s nothing we did that I regret,” I told Nard, as we sat in the cold, me alternately sipping on my $5 beer and my free Diet Coke. He slowly sipped on his beer as we reflected on our times and on what we’d done since.

I told him why I’d pretty much stopped drinking long before and he told me he didn’t drink either. “Just doing it some with the guys on this trip, but I really don’t drink at home anymore.”

I reminded him that he became rarer on the “rolling team” adventures about halfway through my senior year, when we illegally brought a couple of kegs back up to the dorm and held a “girls-only-invited” party. Leonard and Jana, the girl he met, ended up, innocently, curled up on the top bunk in his room. Nothing untoward. The door was open. And Titzy, his roommate, was in the room anyway.

Leonard did have to come out to seek my advice. Jocko and I generally played the roll of “hosts” so we protected the kegs and, of course, sweet-talked the guests at least until he decided it was time to call Mo. We also charged the guys $5 apiece to help pay for the beer. That’s another story as well.

Music was generally blaring, out of sync, from every room. My big stereo, the speakers finally died during the flood of 2010 here in Nashville, generally carried something romantic like Kristofferson, The Stones, Abbey Road or, even, Sly and the Family Stone.

I don’t need to repeat my advice to Leonard on that night he met Jana, other than I told him not to worry about it and that he had a really nice girl in his room who needed his attention. They were married and lived happily ever after for the better part of a half-century. It was their daughter, Kelly, who informed me her dad died the other day.

It was a strange coincidence.  I was thinking about my old friends on a respite from my writing down here in my office. I sent a note to Leonard – I did that every so often – and I got a note back.

“This is Nard’s daughter, Kelly. I’m assuming by your post on FB that you don’t know, but dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer in December and is currently at home on hospice. We are looking at maybe a couple days to a week at the most. If you have any questions, you can give me a call.”

She included her number.

I called immediately. Leonard, she told me, had been told of the disease and prognosis in December. He didn’t tell his family (I’m sure he told Jana) or anyone else about it, because he wanted everyone to enjoy the holidays.

He did have chemo in January, and it made him too ill to continue. There was no happy ending in sight. But he didn’t tell his family about it because two of his grandsons were in the Iowa State high school wrestling championships in mid-January.

Since Leonard had been a high school wrestler – more on this from Titzy later, but Nard continued grappling his way through cold college nights – he didn’t want to upset the grandsons.

Kelly asked me if I could contact Tom, John and Jocko to pass the word that the time was near.

I continued my Facebook “conversation” with both Kelly and her mom, Jana, well into the evening. Tom and John and John’s wife, Ramona, joined in the conversation, sharing our sadness, offering our services and our prayers.

Jana even jumped onto the thread, even as hospice oversaw her unconscious, sedated husband, nearing his final breath in the family home, to COMFORT US…. “This is Jana… Nard loves all you guys sooooo much! He is towards the end of his journey but not in pain... I wanted you all to know that. So many fun memories that he wouldn’t have traded for the world! Love to all.”

The Facebook message came at 4:55 a.m. Friday, February 12, just hours after our previous conversation. Straightforward, but even I could feel the tears in the note from Kelly:

“Just letting you know that dad passed away early this morning. If you could pass that along to the group, we would appreciate it ….”

Kelly told me where the funeral was going to be, how it could be accessed on Facebook.

As I’d done the night before, I contacted the other guys. It hit hard, of course. We are not young men anymore, but even so, Leonard always was so happy, so full of life.

“One thing about Nard, he lived a happy life,” Tom (Carpy) said, when I reached him on the phone at his home at Lake Las Vegas, where he and Deb have retired after his long career as a vet in Orange County, California. Actually, she’s still a bank executive, but can work via remote.

I stopped to think about Nard for a while. Well, I couldn’t really sleep.

I thought about the famous Vator Bowl Parade that preceded the huge, garbage cans and water balloons Vator Bowl that soaked the carpet between the elevators and helped lead the way for the residence life people to send us a Vietnam infantry lieutenant to serve as our head resident.  Tom Martin was a good guy, but he got stuck with me and my Merry Prankster pals for two full years.  When he wasn’t calming us down and keeping us from going “too far” – a relative term, to be sure – "Lieutenant Marty" would tell us about the horrors he saw in Vietnam. And those horrors returned in his sleep, he said.

Anyway, there were so many great times. There was the Viking Fest, when Jocko and I made pheasant stew from birds Nard or maybe Titzy brought us. We also bought a turkey and got a lodge out in the country – a university “retreat” building that we called “Lean Feeners Lodge” – for the party.

Again, we passed the word that girls only could be invited. It was another one of those parties that Jocko and I charged admission fees to – to the men, not the women – that helped us pay for our college or at least for our beer. It came in handy to have a strong fellow like Nard on hand when it came to transporting 15½-gallon kegs and full turkey roasters through about a mile of snowy pathways to the lodge.

There was the day that Nard, Jocko and I went out to The Ledges, a state park on the Des Moines River, out near Boone, where we went down the snowy slopes like we were skiing, all the while filling our tennis shoes with snow.

That was the time that Nard got a stomach-ache. We were miles from civilization and a toilet and the snow was too deep for him to just use the woods as his restroom. We came upon a stone chimney – no house, just an ancient chimney, and Leonard climbed to the top, making himself a commode perch that he quickly used as Jocko and I moved upwind. It wasn’t Santa Claus coming down the chimney that bitter-cold day.

Tom jumped onto the Facebook conversation the other night to add: “Very sad day for all of us, Tim. Hard to believe. Nard packed in a lot of laughs. He hid my desk light one afternoon. We tipped over my chair, put the light in crooked and left him a note I was in the hospital after getting electrocuted. It was really funny, until we realized he was running through the hospital looking for me. I hid for hours when he got back. He will always make me smile. Love you all.”

John (Titzy) responded to Jana’s note about how much her husband loved us by saying: “Jana, this is John. Thanks for the note.  I am glad he is in no pain. However, if you will recall, I was his wrestling partner until he chose you. He had to wrestle me before bed, so he would be tired. (His exercise program). Seemed like he always slept well, and I was in pain, then he would wake up at crack of dawn and throw a pillow at me. Many, many memories, all that I treasure. Our love to you.”

Through my own tears, I read these notes from my friends. I thought about how long since I’ve been with them. How long ago was the Vator Bowl and the Viking Fest? Free meals on the run at truck stops and diners. The $1.25 all-you-can-eat pizza and fried chicken joint out by Boone, a weekly jaunt that usually had Jocko and me lining our school backpacks with plastic bags.  Snacks for later.

I kept Jocko in the loop on the messages to the others, but for some reason it’s been years since he’s replied to me about anything. But that’s OK. He’s a good man, and I knew he was crying inside for Nard. I wanted him to know I was thinking about him, the rest of the guys, friendship.

Which brings me back to undying friendship. I actually have lost old friends to Trump and to religion in the last year.  It hurt. But I’ve always been what I am, so I live with it.

Beside that, I could always look further in the rearview to remember my times with Nard, Titzy, Carpy, Jocko and sometimes the other guys. Coach. Captain Kirk. Wizard. Dog Shit. Hondo. Uncle Moose.

It was that first group, though, that I’m closest to. When I see them, and I have, they look like old men, but their faces show the brightness, the gleam of happiness that we felt during our evenings at Tork’s, the Viking Fest.

Our meals in the cafeteria and our late-night/early morning laughter. The midnight snack of purloined cold chicken and pizza from the Boone lunches.

I think most of us were “A” students, by the way, so it wasn’t all just fun at school. But while we did take time out to study, I know, for me, anyway, the very best part of my college career was spent with those guys.

At the top of this rambling tale, I write about Iowa State University and the Cyclones. I had written Nard, oh, a year or so ago, that I really wanted to come back to Iowa one last time, go to a ballgame, do some old-man “rolling,” without the girls and grease burgers. We'd hatched this plan, actually, at Tootsie's, where we watched the Cyclones basketball team play on one of  the TVs. I didn't want this idea to die.

He told me to come on, whenever I could. Let him know, and he’d get the tickets. Maybe Titzy and Mona would come down from Northwestern Iowa, where they farm when John’s not some agribusiness bigshot in Chicago. Maybe Carpy and Deb could come, if we gave them the right date.

Then came the virus, and any plans for travel to Ames, Iowa, had to be put off for another year.

Of course, that year has barely begun. And Nard is dead.

I looked back through our Facebook conversations today. Most of it is just us teasing each other, reminding each other of how much fun we had. There is something of an all-guys theme of empty beer cans and urination.

And a lot of love.

They are going to have services for Leonard Wednesday in Red Oak, Iowa. As he was so loved, I’d expect the whole town to be there. Titzy and Ramona are going to try to go, if the weather cooperates. Mona said they’d be proud to represent the rest of us.

As I was about to close out this rambling, I decided to go back through our Facebook messenger chats over the years. I stopped at the last one from Leonard: “Happy birthday, ole friend,” he wrote. “May we enjoy many more.”

You can’t always get what you want.  

 

 

 

     Me and my pals in 1971 during hog-cutting weekend at the Titzy farm in Cherokee, Iowa. From left, my best pal, Jocko, Titzy (barely visible), Nard (with bushy hair in door), Ivan Tos (behind me) and some other guy time forgot. Nard's death remains hard to accept.

Remembering our day of deep-fried hog nuts and beer at Titzy's farm and pondering Nard and death

 

When I was a young man at Iowa State, we all went off to Titzy's family farm in Northwest Iowa. Titzy, John Nitz, had invited us there for hog-cutting weekend. Jocko (Jim Mraz) at left and me (I think you can recognize me with the long hair in the front center part of the picture... and I went by the name "Champo") had the duty of taking the cuttings and soaking them in salt water and frying. The rest were farm boys and they helped John's dad and the vet with the process. I can't remember the names of the guy on the right and the one right behind my head. It would be 50 years ago, after all. Titzy is in the barn, wearing the stocking cap. Leonard "Nard" Sandholm is the guy with the bushy blond hair in the doorway. I wrote him a note today, and his daughter responded with a note to let me know that Nard is dying in the next days or week at the most. He's got stage 4 liver cancer and is unconscious, under heavy medication, as they prepare to let him go. The last time I saw Leonard, we spent a half-day at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. He was passing through Nashville on his way to a farmer's convention in Florida. I love these fellows, especially Nard, Titzy and Jocko and Tom Carpenter (our fifth starter on the Rolling Squad, he wasn't there for this picture... or maybe he took it. By the way, other guys tried to join the Rolling Squad, but they lacked the stamina it took to keep up). Carpy (Tom) was the first guy I called when I got this horrible news. I have many tales to tell involving me, Jocko, Titzy, Nard and Carpy (Tom). We lived hard and loved each other like brothers. Still do, though time has separated us. I'll never forget any of them and I'll surely cry some more when I find out Leonard has gone. Course, he probably wouldn't want tears. He'd probably want me to break out a beer and tell tales of our adventures. Some aren't fit to share, but we had fun. Man, did we have fun. Leonard: I love you. Goodbye.. You have been a valued part of my life, which was made richer by you being my friend. Maybe I'll see you in the next world. ... (Oh, and by the way, the "oysters" were washed down by Wiedemann's beer that cost us 69 cents a six-pack, a step down from our usual 89 cents Falstaff or Stroh's. I think Nard would appreciate me adding that note, plus adding that the "oysters" tasted better going down than they did coming back up.)