Not Dead Yet

 
No, I'm not dead yet. But reaching the age of seventy (70) is at the least evocative and viewed by some as pejorative. When we were growing up, my brother Dave and I never considered that we might someday get old. In my family, the culture did not include foresight or even planning. What was happening now would always happen and the way things are now is the way things will always be. It may have been their Depression-era lives or lack of formal education that contributed, but my parents did not discuss college selection criteria, career options, money management or instruments for retirement saving.

So we just got jobs and worked, because that's what you did. I was working pretty much full time (along with going to school) by the time I was sixteen. Being big for my age, or any age for that matter, I just lied and said I was eighteen. Who knows whether they believed me or not? It was a different time. No one checked. ... ... No one cared. Like I said, it was a different time. But there I was, sixteen years old and working alone, on the overnight shift, 9 PM to 7 AM, with the drunks and the delivery people and the tired ladies. 

I've written about working at Royal Castle before, cooking hamburgers and eggs, washing dishes and cleaning toilets. The reason I'm bringing it up now is because of the dream I had last night. I was in Royal Castle Number 2 which was actually the very first one. But the company did a little renumbering trick because the store downtown had to be Number 1. But Number 2 was a small store, just a lunch counter with maybe eight or ten stools. It had been there since 1938 so it was old AND tired. I could clean that store all night and you could hardly tell.

Number 2 was in a section of Miami called Little River because a little river named Little River ran through it. I love that word flow: Little River, LittleRiver, littleriver. The store was built along NE 2nd. Avenue when it was still referred to as West Dixie Highway. Once upon a time West Dixie was a very busy highway leading to downtown Miami. But now it was 1963 and other roads had taken much of the traffic. 

Working there, then, I didn't realize that I had been born a mile and half away at Northwest Hospital on 79th. Street or that the place my family was living when I was born was only a half mile away. Later, my remarkable genealogy skills uncovered that my father, grandmother, and aunts and uncles had lived and worked in a number of places within the same half mile. Additionally, the bar where my mother and father met (hey, no judgment here) was within that magic half mile. So, no one told me... it's a thing.

So the dream had me at Royal Castle Number 2 early in the morning out in the street. But that was actually more of a memory then a creative dream. The way the night shift worked was pretty standard. As the bars closed there would be a steady stream of drunks coming in for their %$^#@ eggs to try to sober up enough to drive home. The deliveries of fresh buns and doughnuts would start after 4 AM, but before that was a quiet period where sometimes the store would be empty. 

If I was up to date on my cleaning, I would step outside and stand in the middle of NE 2nd. Avenue and feel the Miami-morning fresh air and enjoy the shocking quiet. It was far enough away from Biscayne Boulevard that you couldn't hear cars at all. What you heard was a few exhausted insects and the low buzz of some fluorescent lights. Up the block I could see the darkened marquee of the Rosetta Theater where the mother of my friend Richard Scanlon had taken us in 1958 to see 'The Vikings' with Kirk Douglas. There was no life around me, I was absolutely alone. I could see into my store and there was the counter behind which I labored. If I was tired enough (I was still in high school) perhaps I could even see MYSELF behind the counter if I squinted a little. 

The gentle reader is probably thinking, "There he goes again, unstuck in time like Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim in 'Slaughterhouse Five'". But I'm not unstuck, I'm stuck. I never expected to live this long... ... ... good thing I planned for it. Whee!