“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple and a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me”, once quipped a young poet, Jenny Joseph, as she dreamed of the nonconformity of aging. “And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves…and make up for the sobriety of my youth…and learn to spit”. She is a woman I would have liked to have known.
My grandfather, as if it were his religious obligation, embarked upon a daily pilgrimage to the local Hardee’s to sit with other men of his ilk, drink black coffee and debate which heirloom tomato grows best in direct sunlight. When the world’s ailments had been measured, blended and baked, they would leave with their cigarettes still smoldering in the small aluminum ashtray with thoughts of tilling their gardens and chasing crows from the vegetables that thrived there.
Not unlike my grandfather, these six men seem to have similar kindred spirits and can balance the scale of small town gossip as well as any Southern Baptist women’s bridge club could deal. I felt compelled to sidle up at the adjacent table hoping to glean some down east North Carolina wisdom and maybe an off-color joke or two.
Some would think they said nothing much at all. At least nothing of any real value. They mumbled to one another, sat quietly at times with n’er a word spoken, and would laugh spontaneously as if voices were running circles in their minds. If those were my only observations, I would have missed what was really unfolding before me.
Some say it’s important to read between the lines. I feel it’s equally important to listen between them as well.
Amongst conversations regarding the high price of shrimp, cold fish for breakfast, who’s been arrested, a close encounter with a ‘78 Pinto and the perplextion of a Highway Patrolman they saw walking along the roadside, one asked the other upon sitting down, “what’d you do today?” “Nuthin’!”, said the other, which I found highly unlikely. I’m sure there were some “goin’s on” being held close to the vest. I believe these men were weaving their lives together as a hay baler might rake and bind his crop in the field. The blessing they brought to one another goes unspoken, but they knew.
When I am an old man, I shall find friends like these who care not one bit about fashion, coiffed hair or eloquent speech. I shall eat ice cream and spin threads of days gone by and laugh, as if voices are running circles in my mind. I shall covet times of friendly communion over a biscuit and mumble words of truth…tall, true or just stretched. The story of fish caught as a teen will be likened to “The Old Man and the Sea”. And, I shall share my life, as imperfect and flawed as it will be, with men who love me. Wisdom will be dealt, like hits in poker, and no one will fold when life’s storms roll in. And, I will spit, a lot.
Becoming an old man can wait. As Jenny Joseph proclaimed, “but maybe I ought to practice a little now. So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.”
Facing Southward 