Bob

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I was working at an Italian joint owned by three criminals from Kosovo when he came in to the bar and said, “Cappuccino with whipped cream!” He was in his early eighties and wore a Hawaiian shirt and a gold necklace and shorts and a straw fedora. He said you’re too good looking to be working here what month were you born? Ah Capricorn. You got an earth moon and fire sign. It’s why you’re good at talking to people. After he almost went to blows with one of the brothers. Difference in politics. Before he left he said let's hang out some time. There ain’t shit to do in this town. He came from Missouri. Said he remembered the day salmon arrived. Big deal. Fancy. Salmon and all. He drove a red VW bug and collected old Mercedes. He lived on top of the canyon with his high-school-sweetheart and she had had enough of him. He’d sit in his garage all day cleaning his gun and smoking marijuana. He said in his younger days he played trumpet and went to Vietnam and that he had a great time in nam. Sat behind a desk. We spent one afternoon looking at old photos. Those small ones you put in a projector but the projector was in the attic so we just held them up to the light. When I was not working we’d go to the thrift stores and gun stores and Italian restaurants and Mexican restaurants and he was old. He nearly fell face first into a glass table at the gun store. The proprietor looked at me like get this lawsuit out of here. He was capable of saying brilliant and insightful things. Sometimes it was simple stuff like “that box there by the gas pedal is for you to rest your foot on. And when you go over a bump stand on it and it will take all the pressure off. Volkswagon knows how to do it.” Or, "If you drink lots of whiskey you’ll be dead in your sixties. Happened to every hard whiskey drinker I know.” He didn’t have book smarts like other old cats I’d met. He had this silver haired human I’m in the last seasons of my life wisdom and there was a glowing about him some days. But not everyone appreciated that. So sometimes he’d become just old and in the way and it was unfortunate cause he still had energy, wanted to talk and play. Anyhow by the end of the day we were both tired. What had started out as a day of laughter story telling and listening turned to a worn out drive home. Sometimes I’d wonder what am I doing hanging out with another old man? It didn’t last long though. the election was approaching and he was red blooded democrat and capable of going on rants. I said he ought to not spend the last years of his life considering and obsessing over such trivial things. Then I got ready to fly back to Sweden and he said I’ll miss you and I said me too then he started ranting again and I said he was wrong and all that shit in his phone wasn’t real and he didn’t take well to that so we said so long. A fews days after I landed Donald won and he messaged me and said he was sorry and that the pills made him angry. I said I was glad to have met him.