WriteOutLoud

Geezers III

Saturday morning, Burt pops in to make things right with the bathroom sink plumbing (by replacing original masking tape with actual fittings).

I ask, "How's your hand?"

"Much betta. See, I gotta stitch!" Holds up hand; butterfly bandage, crooked.

"Does it hurt?"

"Aw, naw." He looks at the cockeyed butterfly again. "Hurt a little when I put the stitch in, is all."

"You did it yourself?!?!"

"Shuah! Usedta be a paramedic, ya know."

"Oh."

Silly me.

Geezers II

Handyman Burt's back today, doing scary TC things with aluminum siding, tin snips, drills. I hear him out there in the heat, whirring and pounding and cussing.

Suddenly the back door bangs open and he yells, "Hey! Gotta band-aid?" and heads for the bathroom. I'm right behind him. 1-inch gash on the outside of his right hand. Blood all over.

"Oh, Burt, you're gonna need stitches! This is deep!" I wad up t.p., press it on the wound.

"Nah, nah, just a band-aid." More blood. "Oh. You got some tape?" I get tape. "Just put the band-aid--"

"I'm putting two!"

"Nah, just the band-aid, then the tape. OK, good, wrap it around now. OK, thanks. Aw geez, I got blood all ova! Well, thank you very much, Young Lady." And he's out the door and back to work.

I follow him. He's on his knees, peering under the TC. "I seen a vomit unda hea, y'know," he offers.

"VOMIT?" I screech. Nobody's been sick that I know of. And certainly not under THERE.

"Yeah, you know what kinda vomit, right?"

I have NO IDEA.

"A RAT. 'Bout this long." His hands--the right one brightly taped, are about 16"--apart.

I say Ick and Yech, standard Young Lady Noises, then remember I'm in the desert, and there are desert rats who belong here far more than I do, so we agree about this, and I go back in the house and sit down here.

***30 mins.***

Door flies open again, he's back in the bathroom, not calling for me. I go anyway, peer around the corner. The band-aids and tape are all a slithery red mess. "We gotta do this ova," he mutters. "It was just startin to coajulate good, but I hit it on the fence. You gotta watch out with these things, Young Lady, they're very shahp."

He let me put Neosporin on this time, at least.

Geezers!

Just when I thought I'd run out of them, a new one comes along: the handyman my mother hired to fix up the Tin Chateau I just moved into.

The "Semper Fi!" bumpersticker on his minivan gives me a head start on his history. When I hear the accent, I guess Boston, but no, it's Jersey. Hackensack. "And the Corps?" "I joined up the first time in nineteen-faughty-eight." "Korea?" "Yeah. And then three tours in Nam. Flew F80s, got shot down twice, see these ankles?" Above the weathered running shoes, wreaths of purple scars. "Hadda eject, knocked myself out, broke em both, ended up in the wata 18 hours, nearly froze ta death. You need a couple switchplates ova hea, Kid."

"Kid": hallmark of my kind of Geezer. Crusty on the outside, pudding on the inside. Great stories. I got my first Geezer when my mother married my stepfather. He wasn't a Geezer, but some of his friends were, and we buddied right up. We'd hang out. At the lake in the summer, we'd do chores together--chop wood, fix boat docks, tinker with stuff. My mother called it "kicking tires," as in (on the phone), "She's out kicking tires with Elbert, I'll get her." I was 35, he was 82. I don't know if I had a crush on him or wanted him as a father replacement (the job had been vacant for years), and I don't care, I was more than content just to hang around with him, and he seemed to get a kick out of me, too.

That's it about Geezers, I think--they still get kicks out of things and people. And they remember kicks they've gotten in the past, and can recreate them (they're all great storytellers) so that you get a kick, too. I overheard Robert Ellingson at a party, offered a cigar out on the porch, bellow, "Cigar? Hell yes, I love a good cigar. Use to eat em! Sig ate em, too." (Sig was his brother, dead before I arrived on the scene.)

The last time I saw Elbert, he'd had a stroke and was on what would shortly be his deathbed. We armwrestled. I really tried. He won.

My mother just called, having survived the ride home with Bert, my new Geezer. Apparently, his father was mobbed-up in the 30s, and his brother weighed over 800 pounds when he died. Oh boy, I can hardly wait to hear these for myself . . . .