This is a connection of several thoughts of mine. The poem at the end was included in my book of poems, A Pocket of Resistance: Selected Poems (available under the “Books” menu on this website). The introduction is something i came up with recalling Jesse Thompson. Jesse was not the old man in this story. Jesse turned his home into a World War II museum and held meetings each Wednesday for other Pearl Harbor survivors. He had one or two glasses of chardonnay almost every day at the Bonita Golf Club. His entire story is remarkable. i caution that the old man in the introduction or the old man in the poem are not intended to represent Jesse Thompson. My characters came from my head. Jesse was the inspiration.

The old man sat in the darkest corner of the bar on a tall bar stool next to an elevated cocktail table, i think they call it.

He was sipping on his chardonnay. He would have three or four over the course of several hours before driving home in the old Pontiac station wagon. The chardonnay had replaced the whiskey on the rocks or the well martinis or the gin and tonics he used to down when he wasn’t drinking draft beer. His home was just over a block away from the bar, drinking just wine slowly was safe enough he figured.

He had lived hard, wild. Navy, playing dice games at the bar long ago, carousing, fighting for his country and in bars like this one. His first wife left him for an insurance salesman. His second wife died young, breast cancer. One son had moved to Spain. One was a lumberjack in Canada. No one else.

The regulars knew him. The female bartenders and the waitresses adored him, thought he was cute. He despised “cute.” He didn’t partake of the bar banter, just watched, listened while sipping his wine, remembering.

This late afternoon, the young’uns at the bar were grousing about how bad the world was and, of course, they were expounding on how to fix it. This went on for about a half-hour.

In his dark corner, the old man cackled.

The boisterous bar denizens stopped and looked at the old man.

“Why are you laughing, old man? You don’t know nothing about what it’s like today.”

The old man rose from his table tossing his money with a generous tip down by his empty wine glass and starting for the door, turned and said, “You are right, you blithering whippersnappers. I don’t know nothing ‘bout all that crap you are blowing into this bar.

“But unlike you, i’ve been to the dark side of the hill.”

The old man turned, swung open the door, walked to his Pontiac, and drove home.

The crowd was quiet, puzzled.

One, contemplating his beer glass, quietly commented, “I wondered what he meant about being on the dark side of the hill?”

the dark side of the hill

I was walking down a small-town street
a cold, harsh Sunday
when from a corner of an alley
a huddled, gnarled old man
leering from under a soiled and torn fedora
spoke to me:

“I have been to the dark side of the hill,
my boy,
“I can tell by your gait,
you are headed there;
frivolity and adventure
are what you seek,
but it’s not there,
son.”

I paid no heed, passing away
from the old man,
continuing to pass through
the sun-reflecting snow
to the zenith of the hill,
and on.

the wind is biting
on the dark side of the hill;
there is no sun
to disperse the cold.

now, on some small-town street
on a cold, harsh any day
in the corner of an alley,
a huddled, muddled, gnarled old man
waits.

i have been to the dark side of the hill;
my gait is altered.

Things have been happening to me in the last week or so that would make an old man grumpy, and they did.

My clutch went out, which turned into my transmission went out. It happened halfway down the hill from the San Diego Zoo, which is pretty appropriate. i sat there on a Tuesday afternoon for more than three hours, followed by an hour drive in a tow truck, time i had planned for doing something productive.

i won’t go deeply into the repairs but it will take at least a week and north of $5000 to get the car back. i am planning to have this car until i can’t drive anymore because i drive better with a standard transmission and about the only new cars left with standard transmissions are sports cars, and i am too old to drive a sports car. i had four of them in my life, loving every one of them, but i’ve seen old men driving sports cars. They look silly to me. The “courtesy car” the dealership loaned me is new and i can’t find the right button for anything. i couldn’t even turn the lights off at the Naval Air Station’s main gate. i finally found the right buttons and dials to turn off the rap music the previous driver had set on the radio.

This past weekend i had my laptop computer assessed and told it was working great. Of course, they reformatted the hard drive, and i had to restore a bunch of stuff. Then yesterday, it did something strange and i could not boot it up, even though i would have liked to boot it somewhere. With the help of Jamie at Apple Care, it is back. Not fun.

i am finding more things to ache due to my aging. Sometimes, it’s doing things i should no longer do. Sometimes, it’s exercising too much. Sometimes, it’s not exercising enough. Sometimes, it’s just from sleeping the wrong way. And i don’t know what the right way to sleep for me really is. Then, i feel guilty because all of my physical problems are minuscule compared to family and friends with real health challenges.

Grumpy.

But something made it all right.

Somewhere around the tale end of elementary school, my family began a tradition for Christmas. i suspect Aunt Evelyn Orr, my mother’s older sister, started the family doing it. When two of our family saw each other for Christmas, the one who said “Christmas Gift” first was supposed to get a present from the one whom they had met. At least, i think that was what was supposed to happen although i don’t think the “loser” ever gave that gift. Still, it was fun and for some reason when someone said “Christmas Gift” to me, it made me smile, even laugh, and feel good.

That tradition will not be practiced here this year with the possible exception of Maureen and i saying it to each other (and then giggle). One of our daughters will be with my son-in-law and grandson in Texas. The other will be with her man and his family near Las Vegas. We decided it would be best not to go to Signal Mountain this year for the trip we’ve made almost every year since 1992. We will have Maureen’s sister Patsy, and hopefully her son Mike over for brunch.

So, Christmas will be a little lonely this year.

You see on Tuesday, i had just finished my secret run for final Christmas presents when the damn clutch went out halfway down that hill. It was a beautiful Southwest corner day. i was buying special gifts and found myself wanting to buy more, spend foolishly for folks whom i care about dearly. i wanted to give more for all of my friends and family. i didn’t. After all, finances are a bit more critical than they used to be.

But the feeling i got was nothing short of amazing. i felt good. It felt like Christmas. The feeling was like the one i got when i read Judy Gray’s Christmas wish poem to her 1962 Lebanon High School class. No, i wasn’t in that class, i graduated from the military prep school across the street. But the fellow citizens my age of Lebanon Tennessee adopted me. There not too many things that have made me feel better than that in my life. And the poem brought back that sense of belonging. The poem and my last little gift acquisitions truly made it feel a lot like Christmas.

To all of you who read this, i hope you get that same feelings i had come over me, and…

Christmas Gift.