28/11/2020
-
for Jack
-
He used to cry all the time.
He'd cry about lost loves,
and about friends and animals that had passed on.
He'd cry about his Mama, and how the Mennonites took such good care of her at the end of her life.
He got the biggest kick out of the fact that I'd been raised Mennonite,
and had identified as one into my early 20s.
"A jack mennonite," he'd laugh, "like a jack mormon".
A wayward Mennonite.
He was the guy you'd call if you needed to borrow money, or needed a ride, or needed to borrow a tool,
or if you needed advice on how to fix something.
He peed in cups for his friends on probation, and housed countless "n'er do well shed dwellers" in his workshop/shed if they needed a place to stay for a night or a week or longer.
I was even a "n'er do well shed dweller" one night after I'd moved away and was back in town visiting,
and had too many drinks to get back to the place I was staying.
He wore jeans and cowboy boots.
He had good hair, and a perfect 70s/80s mustache.
He was a true Texan.
He always wore his shirt unbuttoned a button or two too low.
He was a true Texas ladies man.
He'd been married 5 times.
He married two women twice.
The third one was a "wild card".
He was a self described devout atheist.
He'd tell the story of how when he was 15, and living on the border in Harlingen Texas, how one night he brought an older Mexican girl home for supper,
and how his Daddy Bob pulled him aside and said "Jackie, your mama don't know it, but that girl's a w***e. And you shouldn't bring her into this house."
"And she was a w***e," he'd say through the tears. "She was a Mexican w***e and I loved her."
And then he'd pause, and sobbing hard he'd say "s**t, she's probably dead now".
He'd been to 48 of the 50 states.
He worked for the circus for many years, advancing shows.
He'd travel on ahead of the circus and make sure everything was set up in town for when the show arrived.
He worked for an oil company for years as well, driving back and forth all across the country.
When I moved into the RV park he'd just retired from his final job - a master plumber.
He was proud of that.
I had the biggest yard in the RV park, but he had the nicest setup.
We'd sit on his porch for hours, drinking and listening to music and telling stories.
Merle haggard and the Stones and john prine and that Emmylou Harris Mark knopfler record were his favorites.
He smoked American Spirits and drank box red wine.
He loved ice cold Shiner Bock and Lone Star beer
(bottles only please)
and occasionally Spaten Optimator if he was really celebrating.
He'd had to give up liquor, but he always kept a bottle of bourbon in the freezer for Gailon and I.
The 3 of us and Gus the pug would sit on his porch every day.
He loved that Gus the pug was named after Augustus Mcrae.
Lonesome Dove was his favorite book and his favorite movie.
He said everything you needed to know in life you could probably learn from Augustus Mcrae.
He'd been a hippie in the Haight in the 60s.
Arrested for having a "peench" of w**d, he was facing 10 years in prison, and he had to become a drug smuggler to afford his lawyer costs.
He'd fly bricks of w**d in his army bag from CA to New Mexico, with dryer sheets on top.
The scene in NM would always be a buzz when The Grasshopper's shipment showed up.
No one ever knew The Grasshopper's identity, but they always celebrated his arrival.
One time when he got off the plane and went to pick up his army bags he noticed a bunch of guys standing around in dark suits.
He thought he was busted, that his time was finally up.
He lowered his head, and scooped his bags off the carousel, and quickly spun around and knocked right into one of the guys in the suits.
Before he could even apologize the guy held out his hand and said "My name's Bobby Kennedy, and Im running for president".
He hated Rick Perry with a passion.
When the Texas governor's mansion burned down in 2008 he was briefly a suspect.
Two DPS agents showed up in the RV park one day and said they had some questions for him.
"S**t, I knew Rick Perry was in Europe," he said, "if I'd burned it down I'd have done it when Rick Perry was inside."
When a thief smashed out a window and broke into my girlfriend's home in 2010 he was the first person we called after the police left.
"Hold tight," he said, "Ill be right there."
He showed up 20 minutes later with 4 Lone Star tall boys.
"I thought you might need these," he said,
"There were 6 of em, but I drank one on the way, and I'm taking one with me for later".
He nailed a piece of wood over the window and first thing the next morning he and I went to the glass store and replaced the window.
Freddies place was his favorite bar.
They had great happy hour deals every week day 4-7.
At 3.59 each week day he was parked in the parking spot closest to the front door.
On the rare occasion that someone would already be parked in his spot, he'd sulk and be sullen the whole night, or until Casey showed up and gave him a kiss on the cheek or Clare made him laugh.
He almost always bought every round for Gailon and I.
We'd sit on his porch listening to music on his Bose indoor/outdoor sound system.
Bose was expensive but worth it he'd say.
If it ever breaks you can mail it to them and theyd fix it at cost. He'd mailed it in 3 times in 20 years.
The final time he mailed it in they said they didnt even make the parts for it anymore.
He cursed them, and said old man Bose would be ashamed, and would have never allowed it -
He'd been to old man Bose's house in Framingham Massachusetts.
Old man Bose was a good man
but he'd never buy another bose product again.
There was a long list of places in Austin that he'd never visit if he thought they'd wronged him at some point.
For his 70th birthday my girlfriend and I took him to see John Prine.
I told him he needed to be on his best behavior though, because my girlfriend's mom was coming with us, and she was a devout Catholic.
He was drunk when we picked him up.
But not as drunk as he could have been.
We all had the best time at the show.
We laughed lots.
He'd totaled 5 cars.
He'd been shot at twice, hit once.
"In the war?" I asked him.
"Jealous husband," he said.
"He walked in and she was on top of me. First shot hit the mattress. The second one hit me in my ass as I took off running naked down the street."
His favorite scene in Lonesome Dove,
the one he liked to quote most often,
was the scene when Call comes to visit Gus,
and Gus is lying in bed and says:
"It ain't dyin' I'm talkin about Woodrow - Its livin!"
He'd get choked up every time he said it.
There was a piece of paper that hung in his living room, above the front door.
It was a simple handwritten note that said
"It's a good life if you don't weaken."
He used to tell me that all the time.
That's what he always said the most.
If you had one important piece of paper that you knew you couldnt stand to ever lose,
and if you weren't the kind of person that had a safety deposit box,
and you knew you'd be traveling around for years, but would need to find it one day,
and if you could see into the future,
where would you put it so that your future self could find it, when you were finally settled down and needed it?
It was in the 3rd place I looked.
In a Shel Silverstein book on the second shelf.
Where the Sidewalk ends.
It was in the middle of the Love poem, about the missing V.
Its a yellowed handwritten piece of paper, slightly larger than a note card.
About the size of a photograph.
The corners have been cut off, and there's small pinholes in the top of it.
"It's a good life if you don't weaken," it says.
It was tacked up above the front door in his living room forever.
It hangs on my fridge now,
above a picture of The Debbies in Terlingua,
and next to my favorite picture of the nephews.
Its across from a picture of us at Patsys Cowgirl Cafe, laughing and smiling.
He used to cry all the time,
but only for a minute or two.
He'd cry about his Mama, and about friends and animals that had passed on.
He cried when Gus the pug died.
He'd cry about how hard it was to love two women at the same time.
That one I always thought was a little ridiculous.
But I was a lot younger then.
I dont think it's so ridiculous now.
"You're a good man Chad," he used to say to me,
usually after I brought him more wine from the kitchen, "I don't care what they say about you."
And we'd laugh and have another drink.
We used to laugh all the time,
hours and hours on his porch,
sometimes til we ran out of beer.
And I'd help him up out of his chair,
and get him up the 2 steps into his RV.
"I appreciate you Chad," he'd always say.
Sometimes "i appreciate you" means so much more than "thank you".
He used to call every holiday,
and he'd ask about my family,
and how Gus was doing.
He'd always ask when we'd be coming back.
He always said he looked forward to it.
We used to laugh all the time.
Lots of people called him Jackie Joe.
I always just called him Jack.
(Its a good life if you don't weaken)
