Sometimes you just want to get home.  My encounter with Burt left me longing for familiar vistas (and silently vowing to not eat 48 hrs before a flight ever again).

I was staring down the barrel of a 2,700 mile black ribbon that would channel me directly into the open arms of my lovely bride, Trixie.  I hoped the trek would be uneventful.  It was not.

I sent a text to my woman to let her know I was a-coming. Her one word reply was the heart-lifting “hurry”.

I set the GPS and put the van in gear.

I bobbed and weaved the EM-50 Phantom Rambler along the twisting route that would take me to The 40 or The 10…whichever the device listed as the most direct path. (For you east coast normies, “The” is west coast vernacular for “Interstate”)

The good thing about California is that it IS the coast.  The bad thing about California is that everything else IS not. The road before me made The Rambler look somewhat like a Space Shuttle launching  It wasn’t straight up, mind you. If you looked closely you could see it was definitely tilting to one side, which always made you wonder if that was by design.

Almost immediately, I glimpsed an ominous road sign that was too distant to read through the rippling waves of heat.

My mighty steed was chugging up the steep slope that took me ever closer to my darling. My eyes stayed fixed on that sign as I inched upward and onward. Excelsior!  Finally, within visual range I saw that it read, “Avoid overheating. Turn off your blessed and life-preserving air conditioner for, oh, the next 20 miles or so”. Or words to that effect.

I reasoned that since any more time away from her than was absolutely necessary was purgatory anyhow, I had nothing to lose and slid the selector to the OFF setting.

Instantly I took off like a shot! The slow-moving kind that beefy, eastern European women sporting crew cuts throw with deep, rumbling grunts during the Olympics.  I was a large heavy object slowly arcing in an upward trajectory that seemed to be paradoxically advancing slower than the pull of gravity.

I gripped the wheel and rocked back and forth to help the effort until finally, I achieved the summit!  Whew. It was quite a relief, indeed.  I felt the worst was over even though I was still 2,700 miles from home and her.

After that kind of strenuous exertion I need rest and maybe a cigarette.  But, sleep would not serve me, and I don’t smoke. Also,  I feared the inertia would replace momentum. I pressed on.

When reason and rationality got the better of me, I conceded a short respite was in order.  I would take on chow to sustain my energy level.  So, somewhere on a high, desert plain, in the void between California and Arizona, I took a seldom-used exit into an unnamed town and followed a beacon that was the tall and dingy, weather-worn Denny’s sign for a recharge stop at America’s diner.

I picked my way through the parking lot amongst a small horde of trim and healthy, millenial hobos leaning against the side of the building displaying crinkled signs of corrugated cardboard, marked with brief explanations of their plight, a plea for assistance of any kind and the capitalized request that, either way, may God bless me and what have you.

I approached one. A dark-haired gangly youth with sharp features and a charmimg smile. When we made eye contact he asked for spare change.

“No one carries coins anymore, kid. And, one thin dime won’t even shine your shoes.  But, I’m gonna eat.  If, when I return, no one has fucked with my van, I’ll give you 5 bucks.  There’s nothing in there worth as much anyway. So, it’s a good deal, yo”

Young punks today end all of their sentences with “yo”, in much the same fashion that Canadians use “eh”.  Dig?

I often adopt a lingua franca to adjust to the demographics of my audience.  Ending statements in “yo” is a way of letting young punks know that I am hip to their jibe. I am thoughtfully judgemental that way.

He signified his agreement by saying “boss” or “23 skidoo” or some other gibberish.  But, he had made it clear he was the man for the job.

I sat at the counter.  The food and the service was pretty much the same as every Denny’s everywhere.  When I returned, the kid stood, unsure if I would stiff him. I didn’t.  I gave him the five and some preachy words of wisdom gleaned from an ill-spent youth and too many miles on the road.

“Don’t waste that on food. Save up until you have enough for some blow, or a hooker.”

With a boyish smile he insisted he would.

Erroneously assuming my good deed for the day was done, I climbed into the saddle. As I was fumbling with the key, an old lady got the drop on me.  The heat was so oppressive that I had left the driver’s side door open to serve as a life-sized vent until I could power the windows down.

During that time, she ninja-stalked up in my blind spot and tapped my elbow. I whipped around.

Standing there, dressed in loose-fitting cotton garb was a shrunken female who I would put, conservatively, at 100 years of age.

She apologized for startling me. I smiled reassuringly and told that she had not startled me one whit, even as I rubbed the knot where I had just banged my head.

“Whit” means “small amount”, by the way. But, it fell out of use many generations ago so that now, only really old folks know what it means.

Since she had approached me, I felt it was her duty to initiate the topic we were to discuss, but she seemed hesitant.  Ever quick to quell an awkward silence, I tried to put her at ease by asking her what Willard Scott was really like.

The poor dear seemed more confused than ever…bless her heart.  When she still didn’t speak I said, with a sweep of my hand to take in the landscape, “My gracious, I bet you remember when this was all fields!”, even though we were in the barren desert, and except for the Denny’s, it was all fields.

This seemed to snap her back to reality. She shook her head side to side and held up both hands, signalling me to hush.

“I need some help, young man. I am driving with my husband all the way to Phoenix and…I need some help with him.”  She said beseechingly.

I sprung out of the Rambler, still rubbing the sore spot on my head and said with a slight bow, “I’m at your service, ma’am. How can I be of assistance?”

She motioned for me to follow her to her car.  She was a bit harried. She explained that, Fred (her husband) was elderly and that, being so, he had trouble maintaining an upright position on long car rides and that they are going ALL THE WAY to Phoenix and they simply MUST get there before sundown!”

It wasn’t quite noon. Phoenix was maybe 2 hours away. This gave her about a 4 hour tolerance to make her deadline. I told her not to worry that she was well ahead of the required pace and asked how I could help…specifically this time.

She said that Fred had started to slide down in his seat. It must be a very uncomfortable position for him. She said that he sits on a towel and we need to pull him back up.

What she didn’t say, she didn’t say, so to preserve some of Fred’s dignity. The towel served the dual purpose of allowing folks to lift up on it so as to not have to yank on his fragile and brittle bones and joints to reposition him, while simultaneously serving as a last line of defense should his incontinence products reach their saturation point.

I was directed to the passenger’s side. The plan was for me to lift one side of the towel, while she lifted the other. Once we managed to get air under Fred, she would make subtle adjustments to get him properly seated.

My description of what took place, ran through my mind in a flash…in under a second I processed a scene/scenes that will take much longer to describe than it was to execute.

I saw before me a man. A very old man. Slumped and helpless. He was thin and frail.  He lacked the power needed to push himself up a few inches in his seat. Except for dark liver spots, his skin was translucent. His eyes were hollow and vacant.  He carried the look of a man who would rather not be present while a stranger demonstrated manly upper body strength in front of his wife.  Here was a fellow resistantly resigned to his fate.

He was dressed in gray sweat pants that were large enough to leave room for his adult diaper.  He also wore a white undershirt and a blue baseball cap with yellow stitching that displayed the alpha-numeric designation of whatever unit he had served in during WWII.

I saw this man. But, as I did, I became a 4th dimensional being. I could manipulate time like a wad of Play-Doh.

I could step back outside of his linear existence and jump to any point in it just like I could point to any graduated mark on a ruler.  I saw him (and her) as strong and youthful.

As a master of the fourth dimension,  I commanded time to stand still while I played the clip of their life. I saw their struggles and triumphs.  I saw his strength, her beauty. I watched as his aegis decayed and her’s blossomed, and though the cadence altered, they had stayed in step as they proudly marched through the years.

And, I saw him as more than this helpless old man who so routinely shits his pants that it must be planned for ahead of time and on a daily basis. I saw him as a  hale and hearty, human hell-bent on saving the world in his time.

And, I saw her as she stood with him and for him and I watched as it broke her heart to witness the man who had captured her affection, slowly descend into a seeming nuisance, as she silently shouldered the burden that had broken him.

The world would never know what he once was, only what he is. She never wavered in her devotion or duty. And, it all happened in the blink of an eye, yet too slowly to be detected as it was taking place.

I wanted to scream at them, “I SEE YOU!”, but they would never understand that I understood.  The only thing I could offer was to show neither pity nor disgust. To simply do and to serve and to treat him with the same indifferent dignity we should treat all others, which is to say, nothing noticable.

Time began to move again.

I reached for my edge of his towel and greeted him, as one should do so as to not treat him like a piece of furniture.

“How’s it going there, bub?” I said as I grasped the cloth and waited for Ethel to coordinate our heave-ho with a countdown.

Summoning a pool of energy that he kept stored for extreme emergencies, Fred stiffened his neck and lifted his head.  His cloudy eyes scanned my face looking to make solid contact while he drew a sustained inhalation that was to be used for a pronouncement of some kind. He was bound by some internal code to establish his role as host and lord of the manor, even when being rescued.  He had to pause during the intake. He simply did not have the respitory strength to fill his lungs in one go.

Without exhaling, he soon began to draw more air. His eyes finally locked with mine. His head began to roll around from the shaking induced by interupting his normal breathing pattern, but his eyes stayed fixed on mine.

Ethel and I had him floating on his towel like it was a magic carpet when he finally began to exhale his message for me.

In a throaty, raspy, gasping voice brimming with sincerity, mere inches from my face, Fred said to me, “Fuck you, you son of a bitch! I’ll kick your goddamn ass!'”  And, he meant it.

Ethel, while making final fluffing adjustments, admonished her husband, “Now, Fred, be nice. This young man is trying to help.” I was left with the impression that it was not the first time she had uttered those words to him.

Fred slowly whipped his head around to give her a look that suggested she was naive and couldn’t spot a threat when it stood right in front of them. Then back to me to let me know he wasn’t about to take his eyes off of me for too long. His gaze called me the punk I was.

I said, “Fred, you really are a mean, old bastard.  It’s grit like you have that kept this country safe from the Nazis and the Commies. Thanks for your service.”

He scowled in return. Then promptly fell asleep. Or died, maybe. I don’t know. I got back into the Rambler and drove east where a good woman of my own was waiting to watch over me the way Ethel watched over Fred.

And, no, I don’t remember their real names.  But, that’s how it goes, I guess.