Constantly Sobbing Forrester Has A Moment

Point of Rocks - E. Baldwin, Architect - photo by Joe

Constantly Sobbing Forrester was lost. Again. He had been striding confidently along the B&O tracks through Harpers Ferry, across the Potomac and southward into Brunswick. He turned left onto Maple Avenue and was about to take the next left at Potomac Street, where he knew of a church that never failed to provide a bite to eat and a glass of milk to a hungry hobo.

Suddenly, he had no idea if left was the way to go, or right. Or was it straight for another block, up the hill to "A" Street? He stood there on the corner, turning slowly and studying the street and its buildings and storefronts, and just when he thought he had his bearings, a terrible panic buzzed through him. Not only could he not discern which was the right direction to go to reach the - what was he looking for? Diner? Hobo jungle? Church? Before he could come to terms with not remembering that, a second, heavier panic wave hit him, nearly knocking him off his feet. How did I get here? I can't even retrace my steps, he thought. I can't remember ANYTHING. He sat on the curb and sobbed.

At sixty-one, Forrester was impressively old, for a hobo. It was October of 1940, and he'd been a card-carrying member of the nation's wandering poor (note: they did not carry cards) for twenty years. He was born to a Civil War vet - would never divulge whether Union or confederate - and his nurse-turned-bride, in 1879. He carried with him vivid memories of ice skating on a frozen pond, and wintertime trips to the outhouse, and the sound of chalk on slate. Clear as day, he saw his mother, young and strong, showing him how to blow out the candle on his birthday potato pancake. He could still feel the sting of his father's belt, from that time when he unthinkingly swiped a few bits from the collection bowl at church. He was so little, and he saw coins, and grabbed them. Why? Why did that warrant such an assault. Things were never quite the same, after that.

He knew every curve of the B&O tracks, from DC and Baltimore to Cleveland and beyond. He could tell you what kind of train was coming - and the name of the engineer - from the signature of its whistle as it echoed off the hills of the Potomac Highlands. But he couldn't tell you how he got to this intersection, in this town he'd visited a hundred times. Lately, he was sobbing more often than not. His body was still strong - well, strong enough - but his mind had gone. He could see his childhood and his mum and his pretty, doting sisters with sparkling clarity, but he couldn't remember the steps leading from the train tracks to this spot, a hundred yards away. 

It was beyond cruel. Forrester sobbed, and sobbed. After that, he went on sobbing. After an hour - or maybe forty-five seconds - a strong but caring hand on his shoulder.

"Friend," a voice said, neither a question nor a statement.

"Sob," Forrester sobbed.

"Friend, you seem lost," said the stranger. "Let's get you back on track, before trouble finds us both..."

"Okay..." Forrester felt himself rise to his feet.

"This way," the stranger said. "Back to the tracks. I saw you earlier. Looks like you were headed south..."

Forrester shrugged.

"Toward Baltimore? Or maybe DC?"

Forrester knew those words. Those were cities. Small, but with many trains. He nodded.

"Let's go," urged the stranger. "Are you okay? Can you walk?"

Walk, thought Forrester. I know what walk means. I understand! He nodded again.

The stranger led the old hobo back to the railroad, and they walked southward (which here, in railroad terms, is "east") for two hours, past the east end of Brunswick yard, and along the Potomac past Catoctin creek and round the big curve to Point Of Rocks. He asked the old man questions, and the old man shrugged or said "I don't remember." 

Forrester sobbed off and on, as they trudged onward. He knew that these rails were his home. He knew what a hobo was, and that he was counted among them, but for a million dollars he wouldn't have been able to tell you how he had come to join their ranks - or why.  But then they rounded the rocky outcrop that demarked the north end of Point Of Rocks, and he saw in the distance the churchlike structure that was its train station.

"Baldwin," Forrester managed to say, between sobs.

"Beg pardon?" said his new friend.

"That's Point Of Rocks station," Forrester declared, wiping away some tears, "Designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin. You can tell by the roofing, and the way it looks like a church. Devout Christian, he was. I'm not - but I can feel his faith in his designs. He did Kensington and Bryn Mawr and all kinds of other stations. I remember this place."

They walked on in silence until they reached the bricked passenger platforms of the station, and Forrester stopped and gazed up again at the church-y train station, illuminated by an autumn sunset, with a pile of cottony clouds behind its spire. "I know this place," he said. "I don't know how I got here, but I know where I am. This is good."

The stranger looked up at the structure and tried to see what the old hobo, who was once again sobbing, although now somewhat differently, could see.

"This is good," he agreed.

Battling Joe Frickinfrack And The Art Of Walk On

Look back in wonder...

Today, I completed my 50th circuit around the sun. Fifty times, I've made this 584-million mile trip. 

Fifty.

They say it's not the years; it's the mileage. Yeah, so... that's 29.2 billion miles. I've been around, man - and that's just the miles I've been carried by the earth. Add to that all the endless walking that I've done, and the total is surely hundreds more. Now, although I haven't the energy or the clarity to reflect in any meaningful way on the prospect of turning fifty, I naturally find myself asking questions like "What have I done?" and "How's it going?" 

I've walked. My miles have been aimless. I've gone out of my way to avoid most of life's challenges, and as a result, the rewards I've received have been scant - by society's standards. But it has always been MY walk. MY challenges, or lack thereof. MY rewards. Once or twice, when I walked into utter imbroglio, that too was MINE.

So I'm not going to sit here drinking Cruzan and Coke, watching "Rick and Morty" and waiting for tonight's suddenly-relevant "Saturday Night Live," and waxing nostalgic about where my walk has taken me (or where it hasn't). I'm nostalgic all the time, so turning fifty really is just another birthday. I was pining for 1983 by the end of 1985. I missed the Soviets before the wall came down. I still play Pac Man. My iPod has thousands of songs from the eighties. Wallowing in the past is so much a part of me, it frankly would be more noteworthy to find me not looking back.

That said, there has been an uptick, lately. How could there not? This is the "How's it going?" section, and I'll make it really brief:

All around me, it's going very, very badly. I don't even need to get into the politics of today. Unless you are a billionaire, it's going badly. The global three-ring shit show has only just begun to begin. But that's big picture stuff. How's my walk going? 

Who cares? I'm walking. I've never stopped. Trains come. Paychecks come. Good drinks, good meals, days spent staring at the sea. Little victories and setbacks and blah blah blah. Fifty years' worth have come and gone. I'll say this: I like it, here. I think I'll keep walking.

I have everything I need. 

I walk with [Maris]. 

I also have a bunch of balloons. It's not every day you turn fifty, you know.


This post was prompted by my friends at Our Write Side, who gave us "imbroglio" for this week's Two-word Tuesday feature.

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (from 46) - What Have I Done?

"'Cause your mornings will be brighter

Break the line, tear up rules

Make the most of a million times none."

- Bauhaus  

It's been over six years since I Turned Forty, so I think it's time to wrap up my look back at the (non)event.  At the time, I was  disintegrating, attempting to get back into some semblance of shape, questioning many of my career choices and still being grilled about my child-free lifestyle.  But I did have a few moments of reflection.  I can't remember any of them, so here are some I made up...

No, no, no.  I remember.  I thought what most slackers* think, especially at their milestone moments.  

I poured a ridiculous - like "Risky Business" ridiculous - rum and Coke, swallowed a teaspoon of narcotic cough syrup and asked myself "What have I done?"

The answer came entirely too quickly.  Like, Mike Damone in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" quickly (poor Stacy).  But I digress. 

Not very much.  At forty, I had done not very much.

Most of my friends had children, as did two of my three siblings.  I worked for a woman six years my junior who was a CPA, a respected VP in a growing company, a mother of two and squarely on a CFO track.  I had meandered my way to a job which, to be fair, wasn't much more advanced than my first non-retail gig from thirteen years earlier - and which had about the same limited future.  I knew a handful of world travelers and a fistful of published writers.  I knew a man who had been awarded a Bronze Star, had a hospital named for him and who had served as Governor of a US territory. 

My inventory of accomplishments looked bleak, by comparison.

1. Came home in a police car when I was in the sixth grade.  I was only the lookout for the breaking and entering operation, but there you go.  Lesson learned - schools have silent alarms.
2. Went from curtain-puller for the school play one year, to title character the next.  Signing autographs for little kids is great for a young ego.
3. Saw Elvis working on the Chessie System Railroad over a year after his "death."
4. Convinced the guy at Montgomery Donuts to give me a huge trash bag full of 12-hour old donuts, which I inexplicably dumped on the lawn of the head cheerleader at my high school - a girl who did not know my name, and a girl who was out of town at the time.
5. Drove alone through the "Storm of the Century" in 1993 - from Maryland to Key Largo without stopping for more than gas.  Heavy snow until I was well into North Carolina, then the hardest cats-and-dogs-style rain I'd ever seen - hours and hours of it - all the way to Jacksonville.  Next came insane, 18-wheeler-punching wind, flying debris and reports of over 15 tornadoes across Florida.  That was followed by hundreds of miles of gas stations without electricity, downed power lines all over the place and a state of emergency.  When I reached Miami, it was pretty much just me, the power company trucks and the police, on the roads.  It's a longer story than that, but let's just end this with... Worth It.
6. Invented a time machine using yarn, butter and algae.  Can't remember where (when) I left it.
7. Witnessed, in-person, an NFC championship, Cal Ripken's last game, Darrell Green's last game.  Wait.  That's kind of sad.  Saw a Daytona 500 once, but Jeff Gordon won, so that sucked a little, too.
8. Got doused with Heineken at the ORIGINAL 9:30 Club in DC, courtesy of the not-yet-licensed-to-ill Beastie Boys.  Yeah, I'm not young.
9. Was an invited guest at the inauguration of one of my heroes as he became the Governor of the US Virgin Islands.
10. Proved that soul mates exist - by finding mine.  I know!  Weird!
11. Wrote "Zombieland" and "Warm Bodies" and "The Walking Dead."  In my mind.
12. Ran for the US Senate as a founding member of the Egalitarian Party.  Lost, primarily due to the fact that no one knows what egalitarian means.
13. Stepped on a pop top.
14. Survived.  So far.
15. Managed to have a reasonably good time.

Yeah.  I could go on, but why?  I hadn't compiled a rock star's diary of cool stuff, but as I digested my 40th birthday cake, along with some rum, cola and hydrocodone, a warm blanket of contentment wrapped around my aching, not so young body - twice.

I had [Maris].  We had jobs where we were indispensable, well-paid and beloved.  I had good doctors and drugs and the promise of a long-awaited diagnosis and treatment for whatever the hell was wrong with me.  We clung tightly to each other, and to the promise of better days ahead.  We could, indeed, survive.  And more.  We could thrive on this silly - but pretty - little planet.  Good things were still within our reach.  Big things, even.

We would make the most of a million times none.

* Still not really a slacker.  Just ask my boss!    
By the way - this one was inspired by my good friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS, and their weekly writing prompts of "OLD" and "HOPE."                   

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (From 45) - What Career?

Continuing my look back at TURNING FORTY, it's time to face a measure or two of the career music to which I was listening at the time.  I promise to mention neither the HEALTH STUFF nor the ENDLESS FITNESS RESTARTS this time, although the latter has much in common with my working life.

The truth is, I have no career; I have a series of jobs.  This is an increasingly common phenomenon.  It's not unusual to end up on a career track far from one's college degree or youthful life-plan.  I know a political science major who has turned out to be a successful and indispensable executive assistant, just to name one.  Some career paths, like that one, automatically include some job-hopping to facilitate advancement.

What I saw through the smoky haze of my forty birthday candles was a SERIES OF JOBS with little to no upward movement.  I don't beat myself up too much about this, as plain ol' bad luck gets a significant part of the blame for it; I've been caught up in a ridiculous number of layoffs.  

But at the same time, I was fully-aware of how my choices had led me to be a 40-year old Accounts Receivable/Order Entry Administrator in a small, doomed software company.

Choice One:  Majoring in Business when deep-down I kind of already knew I didn't like business.  I had heard it was easy, and while we've established that I'm not a *real* slacker, it is true that I was not much of a student.  The owner of our local beer and wine store once asked me what I was studying in college, and when I said business, he sighed and told me to expect a life of "taking up time and space."

Choice Two:  Lingering in retail until I was 27 years old.

Choice Three:  Not finishing my MBA.  It was the mid-90s and A) I got some bad advice about them not being worth the paper they were printed upon, and B) with my retail salary and fear of crushing debt, I couldn't afford to finish.

Choices Four through Six:  Doomed biotech start-up, doomed software/internet start-up with imbecilic "visionary" President, and doomed relic from the telecom collapse - one rife with internal turmoil and dysfunction.  Oh well - who knew?

Choice Seven was hardly a choice at all.  It was so much more money and autonomy, responsibility and potential than I'd seen before, and my boss and coworkers were simply amazing.  It was the best fit I'd found since my late teens, and I loved it.  

As I turned forty, I was at peace with the place to which my strange series of jobs had led me.  I wasn't climbing any ladders, but I had come to know that ladders probably aren't my thing.  Could I work harder and be more aggressive and move up a rung or two?  Sure I could, but I had come to value where I was and what I was doing - a lot more than the prospect of fighting for much more.

In our country, we have a tendency to look down at smart underachievers.  I think my problem with that is that we have twisted definitions of achievement.  As I turned forty, I had achieved a good job, with a great boss and the opportunity to take ownership of a process and to excel and be challenged and fairly happy.  I didn't have a career, but I had what I needed.  


To some, that wasn't achievement at all.  To me, it was (and still is) the highlight of my working life to date.

Besides, throughout my life as
Assistant Store Manager,
Customer Service/Sales Representative,
Temp,
Receptionist,
Client Services Representative,
User Support/Training Associate,
Temp,
Order Management Associate,
Call Center Representative,
Order Entry/Accounts Receivable Administrator,
Temp,
and
Accounts Receivable Clerk,
my title hasn't mattered, because in my heart, I've always been a dancer-- I mean, a WRITER!  [Cue John Belushi dancing on the graves of his fallen peers...]       

* Remember - I'm not really a slacker.  I just needed a hook for the title.