2000-01-22 - 12:39:16

seems that a 78 year old man spends time saying goodby to people who can no longer hear. it is depressing, it is in the course of life. inevitable, but occasionally an event takes place that makes me realize that i am still sentient.

over a period of time i have been conversing with a man using e-mail. i knew he was younger than me, but i found that he had about the same outlook on things and the same sense of humor.

as far as we went was to give each other our post office box number and zip code. we knew we lived in the same metro area from our conversations which started when i read his rant on the "columbine high school massacre"

we met yesterday at a coffee house in this vicinity, as he works and i am retired we waited until we could meet some time in the day when we would have time for conversation. the coffee house is in an old house with nooks and crannies all through. many tables and chairs and the walls lined with bookshelves with occasional blank spots hung with pictures painted by local artists. the books can be bought at the counter and are supplied by a nearby bookstore. very comfortable and cozy frequented by people of all ages from the white haired wrinkled old guys such as i, and little kids brought in by brother or sister. from college professors to plumbers.

our meeting was a splendid occasion. we seemed to fit in such a way that age didn't count. but the visiting we did and the exchange of ideas was superb.

it added to my enjoyment that he was a regular frequenter of the place and the coffee house is in the neighborhood where i was raised from the beginning of awareness to the age of almost 18.

as i was early i did little traveling down memory lane, most of buildings were as if i had never grown up and moved, but in some spots new buildings had arisen. there were no more vacant lots any where anymore. across the street from the coffee house is the old "nabe" picture palace which is being razed to make room for lofts. i stood there in a state of mourning, remembering things such as the time during the depression when mom and dad had enough money to spare for us to go to a show. this particular show did not have bank nights, there wasn't that much money around during that time. they did have grocery nights though, and the night we went was grocery night. we sat there listening to the numbers called and people going up to get their groceries, when dad's number was called. mom and i were elated that we had won anything. the thing got even better when dad had to have help carrying three baskets of groceries from the stage. dad and i carried two of the baskets home while mother waited by the third one. we walked back and the three of us walked the few blocks to our house while dad carried the third basket home.

oh my, what elation was rampant as the baskets were unloaded and we discovered that for awhile anyway we were not on the beans, weiners and hotdog diet. mom carefully streetched out the use of the groceries and cooked the goodies interspersed with beans and weiners. and we even had real dessert, jello, sugar, tapioca, crisco, canned peaches.

what a welcome change. the peach pies mom made i can still taste, lordy they were good.

i exchanged e-mail with a lady who lived through those days and she remembers the bean, weiner diet too. back to the old neighbohood the coffee house is on the street where the old street car line was,

consequently there was a periodic distribution of grocery stores, drug stores, cleaner and dyers. hardware stores, novelty and toyshops. as i stood in front of each building i could remember what used to be there and all the associated memories flooded back to me.

after our visit my wife came and picked me up and we drove down the alley to peek at the house where i was raised (it is on the back of the lot).

we lived together in that house for awhile after our marriage - - so we visited nostalgia lane together. there is a nice house on the front of the lot and our old two room house appears to have been well kept.

dust bowl days in that house, every morning would be a little pile of dust blown in through the key hole in the door and drifts of dust which had come in through every crevice around the windows. how dreary those days were. when i would hang around the train tracks near by to watch the trains go by, i would see the men who were trying to go to some place where they could go to work again.

maybe more at another time, i am distracted by my mind wandering back to those days and my fingers can't seem able to find the keys through the damn tears. god it was so wonderful in spite of the "hard times."

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