Pit Stop

This is who he was…

He became a friend to me within a week after we moved into the decaying edifice across from his house.

He was a journeyman carpenter; proud of his work, but humble about his life.  He would tell me which tools I needed – then loan them to me.

He didn’t much like dogs, but he never yelled at ours.

When we were refinishing our floors, he put us up in in his motorhome – for a week.

Instead of yelling the neighborhood kids off his lawn in the summer, he sat out on his porch, made toys for them – then shot them mercilessly with a Super Soaker.

He was the guy our teenage son would go talk to, when our relentlessly unfair parental dicta became too much to bear.

Our youngest daughter called him “Uncle Tony.”

He cut and split wood every year, but never burned any. He hauled it all to his Mom’s house.

He visited his Mom nearly every weekend. She lived 40 miles north.

A charter member of the North End Street Racing Association, he gleefully imparted to me this bit of dubious riding wisdom: “Gas on, brains off.

“Ya can’t get hurt in the air!”

Tony was the first and best friend I made in this neighborhood. We didn’t do much together, but we talked a lot in our driveways, on our porches, and in the middle of the street. It’s not a very busy street.

“Okay, Jack, we’ll talk to ya later!”

“See y’aroun’, T.”

He was a pro-level water skier.

He harbored two immaculate 1985 Honda Interceptors (a Rothmans 750 and a 500) in his garage, a rusty dirt bike on his back porch, and a YSR pocket racer in his shed.

Of the four men in our unofficial neighborhood gimp club, two had running boats and three had running motorcycles; he was the only one of us with both. Diplomacy…

He was a lifelong bachelor.

He hid Smalldaughter’s little dirt bike in his garage until we could surprise her with it following an extensive scavenger hunt. Her expression and his were both as bright as the sun when she finally pulled the sheet off and saw it for the first time.

He was on disability after a Milwaukee Hole Hawg caught hard in a deck plate and blew out his left wrist.

He was the only resident here who got along with every single neighbor, all the time, without exceptions.

He had a garage full of tools and practically no furniture.

He didn’t have the health to support a second surgery on his wrist. It never got better, and he did not go back to work.

He often asked if I wanted to come over and watch racing, but I’ve got a family and I’m not much for TV. I only went once.

He always asked if I wanted to go to Bike Night, but I’ve got stuff to do. That’s exactly the kind of thing I like. I went twice.

We tried to feed him pizza, until he stopped coming over. “I already ate,” he’d say, or, “I’ve got some of that Chinese soup I’m gonna heat up.” He lost 40 pounds while I knew him. That was 40 pounds too much.

Last weekend, we went out of state to buy a motorcycle. I was looking forward to showing it to him, but Tony was gone before we got back.

He would befriend anyone who treated him with respect, but when he tried to make a friend of a demon, that demon killed him.

He was the second friend of the past year. That pace won’t slow. We were the same age, Tony and I, an age where some of us start to lose our way and fall off the planet.

He was a good man, and a great neighbor, and I hope for all our sakes that he had great neighbors. He deserved that. He earned it every day.

So long, T. Save a seat for me.

I’ll be there when I get there – and just like before, I hope you’ll be there to show me around the neighborhood.