History Lessons

The day started well, got bad quickly, turned interesting, and then got better.

Though I would rather have slept, I nonethless dragged my soft belly and large behind out of bed, loaded my bike into my car, and headed out for a ride in the cool, overcast morning. Five miles into the ride, however, first the bike's front wheel and then the rear wheel hit something on the trail, and within minutes I feel that the back tire is going flat. Not wanting to change to my spare tube, I pump up the tire as best as I can, then pedal quickly hoping to get to back to my car. I have tried this same tactic before, and it has never worked well. Same luck today. So, I drag my bike to the side of the trail and start to change the tire, when an older gentleman on an old bike stops. "Flat tire?" he asks. "Yep," I say. "You ride off the trail, or something?" I tell him that, no, I had not, that I had just hit something. As I work, he tells me stories of seeing and hearing coyotes along the trail, how they sometimes catch pet cats from their yards and drag them into the bushes. Once, he watched a coyote eat half a cat in just seconds, then bury the other half. He tells me of the various fires along the trail this previous summer, how most of them are started by the homeless who camp along the river and who seem to enjoy fire. He tells me of what he

Something, though, doesn't work right: I either pinch the new tube, or there is something sharp inside the tire itself, for when I try to pump it up, little happens. Wonderful. I put the wheel back in place anyway, figure that I'll keep adding air whenever I need to rather than walk to the car, and the man then seems to lose interest in me and rides away, saying something about "Checking the job site." So, every 100 yards or so I stop pedaling, put air into the tube, and repeat.

This, of course, means that I must venture into the retail world to purchase some new tubes, and I tell my wife that as long as I am out, I will visit my grandmother, which is something I had planned to do tomorrow.

Always at least outwardly pleased to have someone drop in on her in the modest mobile home she has lived in since my grandfather died and she moved from Illinois to California, she did not mind that I interrupted her progress on the day's crossword puzzle (though she says she can no longer do the NYT puzzle). For several hours I sat in a soft chair across from her and, for the most part, let her talk. At 95 she looks quite well, with the only obvious weakness being her lower back, something a doctor tried to fix several years ago but who apparently only made things worse. She doesn't ask about my back and I don't bring it up, and I lie outright when she asks about what looks like a scratch on the side of my face.

I am amazed at her lucidity, her still-strong ability to analyze the world as it is today and compare it to the various worlds she has experienced in her near-century of existence. Most of her monologues seemed to be stream-of-consciousness data dumps, and she ranged from the state of politics to the Chicago Cubs to our shared familial experiences to what happened before I arrived in her life, then what she thought when I did arrive: "I mostly remember you because you were my first grandson," she said. "And you were so darned cute!" (Gotta love Grandma!) We talked about my mother, my aunts, my grandfather, my cousins and their families; we discussed the Depression and the economic situation today; we ventured into politics. We talked about gardening--how my tomatoes did okay this year, and how she grew tomatoes in a Victory Garden. She and my grandfather spent years fishing in Ontario, Canada, and they once took me with them, so we talked about fishing and the wonderful taste of fresh walleye. My grandfather was a man's man, something you might understand if you are a man: no bullshit, smart, strong, gifted with his hands, intuitive about other people and their assorted motivations--fill in the blanks with some of your own ideas and you'll know what I mean. He was strictly blue collar (as was my father and his father), and perhaps that is why I often feel out of place in a white-collar occupation: there is an earthy, even coarse honesty in blue-collared worlds. A guy doesn't like you, you know about it. (I suggest many of Phil Levine's poetry for ideas about work and the people who do it.)

At a couple points during the visit I was distracted by hunger, impatient because of errands to accomplish. But, the longer I sat and the longer we talked, both hunger and impatience faded, and I was quite glad to be there soaking in what I could. Finally, when I saw how uncomfortable she was getting in her chair, I said I had to leave, and I did. Driving home, I took the long way home through parts of the neighborhood where I grew up and where my grandparents would park their Volkswagon bus on the side of our house and spend time with us after my grandfather retired. I kept thinking about one question my grandmother asked during our visit: "Do you have any good friends?" I tell her I have a few what I consider to be good friends, though I cannot speak for them. "That's good," she says. And on the drive home, I pass by the neighborhood where Kominski spent some time (merely miles from where I lived, we would learn a decade later when we finally met). And at one point I considered stopping by where one of my best friends from high school grew up, for I have heard that he still lives there with his mother and sister. We played football together, worked together after my stint in the navy, and even lived in the same house for a couple of months before I learned that after sharing a room with 40 men on a ship I did not want to live with anyone for awhile. I was also at least partially to blame for his getting kicked off the high school baseball team, and some day I will have to own up to that and offer him my apologies.

But I do not stop at his house, though I think I should have. Perhaps the problem with having new friends is that it is often hard to speak to old ones. Instead, I continue driving home, where I tell my family of the visit and feel that I have just enjoyed 3 of the most wonderful hours a person could have on what has been a very nice day.