I sit here at Georgia’s kitchen table. Megan is at work. Mister Bud, Georgia’s father of 96, is in the living room watching Grit western movie network: two widows and a widower are my roommates. Bud was once near to six feet. Now he is closer to my height, thin, but still straight. He keeps his hair and mustache trimmed close, wears a chain and ornament, two rings and maintains a good sense of humor. He is on the quiet side.
It is said he was once “a bastard,” once got angry and drunk on a Christmas a half century ago and threw the Christmas tree out the front door. Last year he used to stop in here by car every day and say hello, discuss grocery prices, and such with his daughter, Georgia. Now he is a resident. He wakes at 4, watches a cowboy movie, cooks breakfast, and begins daily rituals.
Bud keeps track of my coming and going, and has a better handle on when I will appear than the young ladies in their 70s and 60s. Last night sitting on the porch, as the news of the Mexican father next door being found dead sitting against the side of his truck brought a flock of visitors to the street, he looked the other way, to the couple with seven children considering the broken refrigerator on their sidewalk, taking up a full 8th of their yard, “How long will it be there, Jim? I give it a month, at least. Think it ‘ill be here when you get back?”
I laughed and he chuckled. “This town sure has changed,” he said from his plastic chair. My last visit here, Bud gave me two Timex watches. He has a case of them and had me choose two. “I like having you around, Jim—though you don’t stay. Figured you could use a watch—and a spare with all that traveling you do. I appreciate all the work you do around here.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“I used to buy them at bars. People would get broke, drunk, be looking to unload their watch. I personally could not see selling the watch off my wrist. Look at these, Civil War commemorative with the cannons. Those are for my brother. I can’t go to the bars anymore. Beer doesn’t agree with my medication. Besides, too many people can’t drive on these roads—and not many of them from Baltimore neither; nobody even knows their way around. Getting’ too old for all that. So I moved in here. I do have a six pack of Natty Boh in there just in case I get a visitor. You’re welcome to one.
“The Mexicans sooner park as double park. At least they work—not like blacks, much prefer ‘em there. But they make the same kinda mess, trash everywhere. Rats love ‘em. You know, you could always kick out the door in the basement and come out under the back porch in case of fire—but then you’d have to deal with all the rats! I had a great ratter when I was a boy, won me bets it did—could rip apart more rats in less time then the rest.”
While proofing this, Bud came downstairs with his cane, very smooth gait, bent in pajamas and slippers, and picked up a nickle, dropping it on the table next to this laptop. He has been improving air flow with modified paper towel cores. Megan calls him McGiever.
“I used to live down the city—Eastside, not like your Westside folks; got hit with it first, you did. Would go to the market and drink pigs blood, to wash down that lard sandwich. People don’t eat like that no more.
Amusement parks were the big thing. There was a big one down the way here at Edgemere, been closed since World War II. Now its a wildlife park. A friend of mine got throwed, hurt real bad, we stayed with him, walked ‘im home, all the way down the city, on the street car. There was a little girl once [names her] my same age, eight. She stood up on one of those rides and pitched out. You know, how they throw their hands up. Just gone—must be 90 years ago. That made you think things through.
“You know, I used to be friends with your boss, Carl Greeley. Real tall guy, kind man, good man. He had a place down the Ocean we’d go to. Eat good food, drink some… not too much, you know. He was real close with the man that owned the liquor store at the corner of Erdman and Belair. With Carl having first pick on the seafood and knowing the Water Men, after he went and bought that place, and the other fella having the liquor store, there wasn’t much call for catering. Is Carl still around, do you know?”
“He passed in 2021, I think.”
“How about his stores?”
“His daughter and grandson, both real nice people to work for, they have closed the box store in Dundalk that I worked for the grand opening, and are opening small butcher shops with sandwiches and signature bakery goods out in better parts Baltimore and Harford counties.”
“Good, Jim. Thanks. Carl would be pleased—was a good man, good to me.”
“You notice I plugged them rat holes with bricks and caps out there. Those Mexicans next door have that worthless cat; scared to death of those rats. You see that thing slinking around, skinny, underfed with an army of rats underfoot! That’s a cat for you. Now a dog, a good ratter, a rat terrier, Manchester terrier, first day he’d be digging them out and ripping ‘em apart. With such a dog, all you need is to rip the lattice out from under the porch and there he’d lie, in wait. The rats would be elsewhere. But dogs now, these days, aren’t for men—they’re lap dogs, even the big ones. Women baby dogs and take the pest management right out of ‘em. It’s a scandal, I tell you. Like the O’s. They used to be the Baltimore Orioles. Now they’re playing for someplace called B’More. You were born here, lived here most your life, Jim. You ever call this place B’More?”
“No Sir. I lack the moral cache to utter such sacraments.”
“So where you been, Jim? Where you goin’?”
