Tag: story teller

Bob Stories: A Cup of Coffee at the DMZ

Bob told me this story as he enjoyed a fresh cup of hot black coffee on the patio at the New Mexico State Veterans Home on a ninety-nine-degree day. In the shade. the weather wasn’t bad—dry heat really is quite tolerable—and his coffee stayed hot. Bob loves coffee, and it has to be strong, hot, and black. According to him “there’s no such thing as strong coffee, only weak people.” His favorite beverage led to the story of a welcome cup seventy years ago.

Bob remained in Korea after the armistice. He liked the country and preferred to be there rather than go back to a base in California. On a rainy night, he was one of the men on lookout duty at the edge of the DMZ, lying under some sort of waterproof shelter with his rifle at ready. Rain dripped from a tree nearby, but it just missed him. The ground was rough, “not a place where you would go out for a stroll.” They had to hold still and stay alert “in case hell broke loose.”

One of his fellow Marines was sent out with fresh, hot coffee, not a job the guy delivering it liked, since he had to get wet. Bob was so grateful, though. He found a place in his shelter where the coffee could sit on a rock right within reach, protected by another rock, so the rain wouldn’t get in to cool or dilute the coffee. And then the wind blew a dribbling tree branch directly onto it.

The man who’d been bringing the coffee around came back to check on Bob.

Bob indicated the branch. “Can you do something about this?”

“Better yet. I’ll bring you a fresh cup of coffee.”

 

Bob Stories

My very, very old friend Bob is nearing the last days of his life. He may be gone by the time I publish this, or he may hang on a little longer. In his late eighties, he would joke about death. “I could go at any time. The suspense is killing me.”

He was not only an avid reader, but a great story-teller. I aim to reconstruct a few of his stories now and then. I feel as if I know a huge cast of characters from his long life, people from his childhood in upstate New York, his years in the Marine Corps during the Korean war, his life in Philadelphia after he got out of the Marines, and his move out West. I can’t keep track of all the jobs he’s had. Or all the times he could have died but somehow didn’t.

One evening, we were talking about I-forget-what, and he said, “I’ve lost two wives. That’s hardest thing I’ve ever been through. I know other people who’ve been through worse, with wars and all … I’m lucky. Two good marriages. We had good times.”

He said that if he could have either of his wives alive again and with him, it would be his first wife. Not that he didn’t love the second wife. It’s just how he feels. He says his first wife civilized him. I try to picture their lives when they first met in 1960s Philadelphia. He was a young white man just out of the Marines; she was African American, ten years older than him, and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He couldn’t believe she agreed to go out with him, let alone marry him. She was level-headed, practical, and organized. He was adventurous. And from the stories he’s told me, she had a great sense of humor. A city girl, she never understood his need to go camping. “We work this hard to have a nice house, and you go sleep in the woods.” But as long as he came back with fresh-caught fish, she was okay with his camping. After the first fifteen of their twenty-four years, he says, he finally understood just how much he loved her.

Is there an “other side?” Do people meet again? Bob and I agreed on not knowing; we agreed that the transition would be a surprise. I like to imagine the surprise as a reunion with the beloved women who went before him. Who may have met already and been sharing Bob stories.

This picture was meant to feature the T or C Litter Pickers’ trash can art project. Bob, pausing to rest on a bench in front of the drugstore, photo-bombed. And I’m glad he did. It may be the last picture taken of him. Age 88, late summer 2023.