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.