My Redacted Life: Chapter Five (Cont._4)

After a couple of months on a new job in a new city my social life began to improve. I actually had a date, fixed up by Tom Hodges. It didn’t amount to much. It was a woman with whom I had attended college. She was divorced and had four children. We had a nice time but nothing came of it except for a lingering wonderment on my part on how a couple could make four children before deciding they couldn’t live together.

I guess I had a lot to learn about the new world to which I had returned.

A more lasting event occurred one evening while I was practicing guitar of a Friday evening. I had purchased an old Gibson sunburst from a sailor aboard the Hunley and had become intimate friends with it. As I tried my hand at fingerpicking a tune, I heard lumbering footsteps ascending the stairway. When they turned toward my apartment, I laid the guitar aside and went to the door.

I opened it and there stood a close friend from my college days, a man named George M. Owen. He clutched a six-pack of cold beer in his arms, so I knew he had come with no evil intent in mind. I welcomed him in with enthusiasm and he handed me the beer, a late housewarming gift. I bade him sit, removed two beers, handed him one, and took the rest to the refrigerator.

My oh my, did we have a lot to catch up on. Nearly five years had passed since I saw him last. We both looked that much older and possessed a great deal of information about the lost years. He was working for a local architect and had taken up the banjo. He told me of a group he had joined called The Rackensack Society. It was a bunch of folk music enthusiasts and entertainers that included amateurs, semi-professionals, and even some prominent names like legendary political cartoonist George Fisher.

The group met the first Monday of the month at the Arkansas Art Center and would welcome me with open arms. Me? Aside from family, no one had welcomed me with open arms in years. Was he sure? Yes. Actually, they did, and I stayed close to the group for years, until a work assignment took me away on meeting nights.

That evening, we finished the beer and began swapping tunes on the Gibson. I broke out a bottle of Gallo Sauterne I had been saving, and, in the words of our old and dear friend, songwriter Gary Toler from Texas:

The time it ran so slow,

Cause we had so much to say.

Singing slow and drinking sweet white wine,

We passed the time away.

Friend George had filled in an empty spot in his life. I was no longer alone in the big city. And time, we both felt assured then, would always be a soft loving breeze across our cheeks.

Back then: Gary Toler and I.