Published : 1 year, 7 months ago (Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:32:42 PDT)
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East Dallas had not yet suffered the Yuppie invasions. There was still not a single respectable bar to be found on lower Greenville Avenue, and quiche blight was unknown to the region.
The epitome of culinary mastery was practiced locally by the ex-Navy cooks at the "We Never Close Waffle House" on Gaston Avenue. There they held to the simple but effective disciplines of keeping the grease, the floor and the customers language clean. They maintained order with the assistance of a pistol behind the cash register and the sacrament of free food for cops.
Eighty dollars a month rented the second floor of a once fine house on Tremont Street. Our landlady was a pale skinned, shiny eyed woman of un-determinable age named Juanita. She never left the first floor and never complained about the noise, the traffic or anything else.
John and Fred and I were the paying tenants of the Tremont Street apartment. Non paying tenants were a few thousand cockroaches, numerous rodents, hopefully squirrels, but sometimes rats, a Calico cat named Free and the occasional bar fly.
At the time we three were vigorously occupied destroying the homes and families we had built in our early twenties. We were driven by the unstated and dimly understood purpose of remaining in hot pursuit of still uncertain dreams. Such self mutilation was best accomplished with a minimum of thought and a maximum of numbness.
The Full Circle Saloon was a facile source of whatever anesthetics and distractions we required for this effect. On any given night, one or all of us was likely to witness the 2 AM closing of that lively and disreputable establishment.
The following mornings we customarily surveyed the house to determine who had accompanied whom home. Over coffee, cigarettes and easy conversation we evaluated the likely benefits or dangers derived from any new arrivals' continued presence in our home.
We learned to be especially cautious of those new found soul mates brought home by Fred. He was the most friendly and the least discriminating of us three. John and I soon discovered that in exchange for sex or a couple of joints or even a new blues rift on the guitar, Fred was likely to overlook some pretty major character flaws in a new friend. We kept several baseball bats within easy reach for those occasions when it became imperative to correct errors of judgment that were made in alcohol induced generosity the night before.
This being the nature of our household, I was only slightly puzzled to be shaken awake one morning by a smiling walrus of a man I had never seen before. He handed me a cup of coffee.
"Time to get up, Bubba." he announced.
Gingerly sipping the coffee, I tried to recall the latest location of the nearest baseball bat. The intruder wore faded blue jeans and a red plaid shirt on his six foot four frame. The sight of his massive arms and powerful looking torso gave pause to any flippant replies I might have considered regarding the unsolicited wake up call.
"Thanks for the coffee. Who are you?" I asked, trying to sound polite.
"My name is Carl." the walrus replied. "Fred told me about you last night at the Full Circle and I wanted to meet you myself. Mind if I buy you breakfast?"
Reassured at the prospect of a house guest actually offering to pay for breakfast and relieved to adjourn to a more public setting to continue this conversation, I accepted and suggested we proceed to the Waffle House. (to be continued)
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