I made jokes about growing up to be a dirty old man when I was younger. Not to say that I pictured myself being a pedophile and hanging out at Junior High Volleyball games. Because that was never what I had in mind. I was thinking that I might perhaps hang on to my boyish charm. That I might become like Sean Connery and just get better looking as I got older. I have always hoped there would still be a certain energy I held onto as I get old. I want my golden years to be more Golden Girls than On Golden Pond.
I met a man a couple of days before Christmas back in the mid 90′s that I admired how he lived. I worked for a major chain grocery store and I had the pleasure/curse of having to bag groceries. I was usually a great thing to be able to do if my favorite cashier was working ( I have a health affinity for redheads, especially if they have a smile that is as mischievous as it is friendly). Sorry got a little off topic. However more often than not it wasn’t the preferred duty to be assigned. I would much rather be stocking groceries waiting for some cool song to hum along with to play over the store speakers. Maybe Jesus Jones, or Seal.
However on this particular night there was no groceries to stock. Just hanging out by the registers, pretending to sweep an already spotless floor. Then in walked a man, I would later believe him not to just be ” A Man” but ” The Man”. It was few nights before Christmas when he came rushing in, pointed in my general direction and said “come with me.” To my young eyes he looked like he was in his mid to late fifties. He had on a tie-dyed t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and sandals, with a face heavily tanned and looking like it had been weathered by the wind for many years. These things gave his face character, and a rugged, handsome look. He asked me to lead him to the beer, which explained his hurrying; it was nearing midnight and the holiday meant this would be the last chance to stock up for a few days.
He grabbed two 24 packs and told me to grab two more. On the way back he grabbed some bottles of cheap wine as well. With his arms loaded, he awkwardly shuffled as fast as he could to the register to beat the midnight cut off for purchasing his beverages. While at the register he paid for several bags of ice to go with his beer. He paid in cash and breathed a sigh of relief, it was the type of sigh that you would imagine someone would let out when the doctor told them there was no sign of the cancer left. Replenishing his beer stock was THAT important to him.
I placed the wine bottles in small paper bags, and I wheeled over a shopping cart to load up the cases of beer and bags of ice. I followed him outside and asked where he was parked. “It’s that big beast way back there” he said as he directed me to a monstrous RV at the far reaches of the empty parking lot. I wheeled the buggy around to the door and he asked if I would bring the beer in for him and ice it down.
I will stop there to explain how this was not the least bit threatening to me to the city dwellers. I am and was what some referred to a “Corn Fed Country Boy’. I am not a large imposing man but I was already a full-grown man at this time at least in body if not in mind. I am not a formidable man but I am certainly not the type that would be viewed as a man who is going to be victimized by anyone. Throw in some naive school boys wits and you have a situation where I thought it was odd that I was asked to come into his RV and perform these tasks but I didn’t feel threaten or apprehensive in the least.
I grabbed a case of beer in each hand and walked up the steps into his home on wheels. The first thing I should have noticed was the kick-ass décor, the Jim Morrison picture or even the Depeche Mode playing on the sound system. But the thing I noticed was the young lady sitting at the table looking over a jigsaw puzzle. I would guess she was 19 or 20, 21 at the most. I barely had time to picture what this man and his daughter were doing on the road with so much beer, before she stood up to kiss him. The way he cupped her ass immediately informed me this was NOT his child. We made small talk as I unpacked the beer into his ice chests. He told me he was just cruising the country to see the sights. It wasn’t that he was trying to find himself. He had “found himself a long time ago, and now he was just traveling around to lose himself again.” The young woman he’d met at a truck stop in Idaho about 7 months prior. Since then, they had been traveling around the Great Lakes before making their way South. They had ended up in Texas not because there was any real reason to be there, but because it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Even as I get older, this chance meeting with someone whose name I either can’t remember or never knew to begin with, still lingers. That sense of personal freedom has always stuck with me. The idea that if you don’t belong where you are, you can just drive until you find your place somewhere else. The idea that a loss of hair doesn’t mean a loss of vitality. And of course, the idea that old guys can still get hot women, as long as their RV is big enough.
After I had finished icing down his beer, he shook my hand and gave me a twenty. I told him and his girl to have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, just as I had told dozens of customers. The only difference was when I said it to them …I meant it. If this is a dirty old man, then I think I wouldn’t mind being one.
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