The Journey to the West 15

Although my friends and relatives are now slowly and not so slowly disappearing, my own journey to the west continues. I called one of the few friends I am still in touch with, just to chat as always, to learn that his wife had unexpectedly died. Two weeks later I called him again to see how he was, his sister just died. One of my closest friends is now in a state of advanced Parkinson's and can no longer communicate. Another just had a second stroke and can no longer communicate. Still another has to look after his wife full-time as she can no longer do anything. Still another friend's wife just died of Alzheimer's. There are other terrors as well. The walls are closing in on me. The Great Mystery continues.

By my senior year in High School I had established myself as an absolutely terrible student. I had done well in a few courses, but really terrible in others (especially math and accounting). I had even managed to fail typing, not because I couldn’t type, but because I didn’t like having to do the lessons that I thought were boring. The teacher said that if I boxed up the typewriters for the summer and cleaned up the room she wouldn’t flunk me. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I don’t believe anyone thought I was actually stupid, but there was no doubt I was not a highly motivated student. Even though I was not very athletic, or particularly handsome, I was popular enough and at times hung out with every group there was in our small school. Of course I continued to be a regular at the Pool Hall. My girlfriend and I went to all the dances and most of the social events and sang Auld Lang Syne at the end of the senior prom. We were about to graduate, and my journey to the west suddenly became more difficult, complicated, problematical, and fraught with potential disasters.

For me, the time between my graduation from High School and into my twenties was difficult. I guess if you were the son of a college graduate and knew more or less what you wanted to do, like follow in your father’s footsteps and become a lawyer or a doctor or dentist or engineer or whatever, and you went directly from High School into college where you pledged your father’s fraternity and so on, this period of time might have been very pleasant. This was not the case for me. I had thought about following in my father’s footsteps, indeed, I had practiced various things you could do with a deck of cards, I was familiar with the odds, and was a decent poker player. But after the first thousand hours of practicing in front of a mirror, I realized that to become a truly skilled “card mechanic” was probably more difficult than becoming a doctor so I had given that idea up. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew my father would insist I go to the University. I didn’t really not want to go to the University, but I didn’t want to go either. I didn’t know anyone at the University, had never even visited there, and had but a very dim idea of what was involved. But, then, I didn’t want to go to work in the mines or the mills. There were few other opportunities.

My life that summer following our graduation was further complicated by the fact that, technically, I lacked one or two credits and should not have been allowed to graduate. But in a small town like ours, and with a class that had mostly gone all twelve years together, they allowed me to at least pretend. In order to make up the credits it was decided I would spend part of the summer in Spokane going to summer school. I arranged to live for the time with one of my then closest friends, who had recently moved to Spokane with his parents. My girlfriend, faithful as always, somehow managed to stay the summer there also, and had found a job there. Our relationship, however, was slowly disintegrating. We both knew that marriage was simply not possible under our existing circumstances, no job, no future, no idea as to what to do. She announced during the summer that she would enter a Nursing School in Portland in the fall. I was going to enter the University. Although we had been together for years it was obvious it was not going to last. We did spend the summer together but we knew that separation was inevitable and I think we both began to think of ourselves in very different ways. As she was working and I was attending school we began to see less and less of each other.

This summer in Spokane was a strange interlude in my life in still another way. This was because of the presence of my friend Paddy C., who was at the time a self-described “gaffer,” with a whore to look after and big plans for their future. How my friendship with Paddy developed did not seem to me to be particularly unusual but I guess it was. Paddy was a genuine character with a gift of gab and a sense of humor that helped him overcome his physical appearance. He was several years older than me, Irish, small, I doubt he weighed more than 135 pounds, and he had rather homely features with sandy hair and a prematurely wrinkled face. He had quite a reputation as a street fighter and was as tough as they come. I was fascinated by him and had known him very casually while still in High School. It was Paddy who had assured me with absolute confidence when a man selling marijuana appeared in the alley behind our High School that marijuana was not habit forming. “I’ve smoked it off and on for years and there’s nothing to it,” dismissing it as utter nonsense. Coincidentally, this was at the same time we were forced to watch Reefer Madness in school and we all had recognized immediately that it was sheer propaganda, too ridiculous to be believed. I bought some and tried to smoke it, but as I didn’t know how, nothing came of it (until many years later). Paddy was drawn to me, I believe, because he knew my father was a gambler, and he thought I could probably teach him something about cards. This was not an unreasonable assumption as I had been for a time actually running a small poker game in the back of Babe and Jim’s. I forget who started this game but whoever it was, left, and it somehow fell to me to take it over. It was simple enough, if there weren’t enough players to start a game I would play, if there were sufficient players I would simply supervise the game, removing small sums of money from the pots from time to time which I split with the house. We could have charged the players rent for the table but that was not the local tradition. If there were players, and if the game went on long enough, it was possible to make a decent sum of money. Paddy occasionally played, but he was not really much of a poker player. In any case, Paddy and I slowly developed what I guess was a strange friendship. I taught him a bit about cards and he taught me a lot about life that I would otherwise never have known.