Biscayne

Yesterday I rolled down to the lighthouse at Key Biscayne with my oldest friend. Gene and I met in the fall of third grade. We were both new kids in the third grade at St. Matthias grade school and in the early fall, during one of the neighborhood pickup games in the field at the nearby public school field, we argued about a ball hit over the fence into a neighbor's yard. Gene was pitching and had the ball and I got a fastball in my back as I turned away. From the ensuing fight all I remember is the Pittsburgh Steelers hat Gene wore. Soon we were fast friends.

We talk and reminisce a bit. He turns me on to some of his new music. Twenty five years ago were listening to Floyd and Zepplin. 'Chris, have you heard this one?' and now he shares a song from Passenger that speaks to me.

The last time I spent more than an evening or a day with him was a trip we took to the Smokey Mountains before I went off to the Peace Corps. We piled our backpacks and food into a friend's Duster and froze our tushies off during the rain and snow of a cold January in Tennessee. A disaster of a trip. John, a weight lifter and general tough guy, was reduced to shivering in his sleeping bag for an entire day, refusing to continue. And here's the part where I wonder at the synchronicity in the world.

There is a Tesla dealership in the Lincoln Mall in South Beach. Tesla's are very cool cars but a couple of hours of wandering through shops left me feeling like every place was a Minnesota Fabrics store. I found a stool to sit on and an older woman asked if she could share the table.

'Indiana?'
She smiles and says, 'Yes, how did you know?'
'North of Indianapolis?' and here I didn't use sociolinguistics, but made a leap back across two and a half decades to the night Gene and John and I were driving back from Tennessee, 'I would bet Lebanon, Indiana.'
She looks at me and I know I'm right. I told her the story of the first time I was in a car that broke down in Lebanon on a section of road that the state troopers never patrolled and about the Lebanon Hotel.

We didn't have enough money and no credit card for the Holiday Inn that glowed in the distance off of the interstate, so we walked from the car to the old motel. The room smelled of trucker sweat and John found a dead mouse under the bed. Gene and John walked out to a local bar and didn't get beat up. I slept in a dry place for the first time in a week. Three months later, while my friend Sean was driving my VW van, he punched me awake in the passenger seat.
'Chris, wake up, the van's losing speed.'
'What? Where are we?'
'We just passed Indianapolis.'
'You have to be shittin' me. Are we in Lebanon?'

The woman laughed and her husband came over after looking over the new S models. They were both retired and we chatted about engineering and nursing a bit before they went off to their hotel on 5th Street. Gene had his fill of horsepower and acceleration and we wandered over to the art museum across the street. A friend from Dubuque texted.
'Chris, check out the Tesla dealership in the Lincoln Mall.'

Check that. And I will see you all in Lebanon.