A few months ago, I got a call from Wayne Ratisseau. We’ve known each other over sixty years, from our sophomore year in high school, thru Texas Tech and on up to the present. There have been times when our lives have taken separate paths---Wayne farmed in Brownfield and I built a construction company in Houston---but, even with the separation, we have always remained friends. We were young, optimistic, fun-loving guys---now we’re old, optimistic, fun-loving guys.
Wayne called about his younger brother, Ron, who lives in Medford, Oregon. Ron had a run of disappointing circumstances exacerbated by his wife’s losing battle with Alzheimer’s. She has just been placed in a full time care facility and Ron needed cheering up. Wayne wondered if I would go with him to help.
I thought about my obligations here in town. I worried about the cost involved. I wondered how long such a trip would take. I fretted about all the details to be re-arranged; prescriptions, exercise class, doctor’s appointments, etc. Any one of the items mentioned would give me ample reason to decline the invitation. I wondered why any seventy-five year old man would just jump in a pickup truck and go to Oregon with an old friend. Finally, I thought about the fact that I may never get another chance to do something like this. All that thinking took about four seconds.
“When do we leave?” I answered.
We pulled out onto I-10 at 7:01 AM on Sunday morning, May 22nd, leaving Kerrville, headed west. At about nine that morning, somewhere near Sonora, my cell phone rang. It was my friend R.G. Box, a blacksmith, calling from Lubbock to confirm that we would have coffee with him on our way back in two weeks. I say Box is a blacksmith, and he is—he was born about a hundred years too late and is regressing---but that’s another story.
Coffee is a big thing with R.G. He said, “Janie and I are on our way to Bacon’s to have coffee.”
I asked, “Why are you going to Pecos for Coffee?”
“No, no, Mac! We’re going to John Bacon’s house for coffee.” I finally understood.
Moments after I hung up, Wayne leaned over and asked, “Why are they going to Vegas for coffee?” That pretty well set the tone for the trip. Two old coots like us understand that it is not always necessary, or even desirable, to hear and understand everything that is said.
We made Tucson that day, 819 miles from K’Town, and checked into a Red Roof Inn in the late afternoon, their time. We had “heavy hors d’oeuvres” for dinner—bologna, rat cheese and Sun Chips—and a light drink of good whiskey. We were both sound asleep by nine.
It was daylight in Tucson by 5:00AM and the air was surprisingly crisp and cool. Wayne and I were all packed and ready to go before six. Denny’s, next door to our motel, was open so we went inside for breakfast. I usually avoid cookie-cutter restaurants and Denny’s is one of the most cookie-cutter there is, but the food is good and sometimes so is the service. This time, the waitress, Bobbi, was bright, cheerful and attentive. She livened up the place, even though it looked exactly like the one in Kerrville.
“Oh, my gracious, I just love your shirt!” she said to Wayne. “I have two iguanas at home and I just love them—they’re just tooo cute!”
“You have pet iguanas?” Wayne asked. He was wearing a shirt he picked up in Cancun, sporting a small iguana on the front and a giant one on the back. “I didn’t know you could civilize an iguana.”
“Oh, sure! They are a lot cleaner than cats or dogs. I just love mine!” She answered. “Where you fellas going?”
“We’re on sort of a bucket list road trip. We’re gonna follow I-10 to the ocean and turn right and go up to Oregon on the Pacific Coast Highway. We figured we ought to do this before we get any older.” Wayne answered.
“What a great idea!” Inserted Suzanne, another waitress who had stopped to see what all the chatter was about. “How long are you going to take? Where did you start?”
“We left Kerrville, Texas, yesterday, and plan to be gone a couple of weeks, more or less. Depends on what pops up along the road. ” I answered. “Let me ask you something, Bobbi—What does your husband think of those iguanas?”
“Oh, I don’t have a husband—I ran him off years ago.” Apparently she answered that question often and was not unhappy with her lot in life.
“Well, let me ask you something else. You don’t do anything, you know, a little weird or perverted or something with those lizards, do you?”
Both girls looked a bit puzzled, then screamed with laughter and we got the best service in the house for the rest of our visit.
After we finished breakfast, I went back to the room to be sure we hadn’t left anything—cell phone charger, glasses, etc. When I got out to the truck, Wayne was changing his tee shirt. It was not a pretty sight. We stopped in front of Denny’s as we left and Wayne gave the iguana shirt to Bobbi—she was delighted.
We got back on I-10 and Wayne said, “If you can make someone that happy with something as cheap as a tee shirt, you oughtta always do it.” That is really not a bad philosophy. Wayne is a lot deeper than you might think.
No comments:
Post a Comment