From today's TIMES and NEWS-STAR
In
this thing called life you gather a brother or two if you’re lucky. I have a
couple that might call me from anywhere in the world and it’s never a surprise.
These
are two guys I jumped a train with one night, just to ride a couple hundred
yards, and we couldn’t jump off for 22 miles. Nearly froze. One of us got a
concussion. It was a bonding experience. It was also the night we decided the
hobo or outlaw games were not for us. That was 35 years ago.
Jaybo
is a pilot of Big Passenger Planes today. Once he returned my text with this: “It’s
the middle of the night here in Hong Kong. I’ll find out in the morning.” He
did just that, and texted me back – in the middle of the night here.
He
sends me photos from beaches and islands and Iceland and London. I do not like
him as much as I used to.
Like
Jaybo, our friend Matth (with an “h”) gets around, but he is more of a mainland
guy. This does not inhibit his travels as, if you’ve looked at a map, there is
plenty of mainland for anyone not on probation to explore. Matth has a grown
daughter in New York City, a house in Carolina, a trailer in New Orleans and in
California, two trucks, a motorcycle and a free spirit. And a great sense of
direction.
He
is also my favorite Matth of all time, just ahead of Marshal Dillon of “Gunsmoke”
and Matthew/Levi of “The New Testament.” You recall that one day Levi was a
despised man collecting taxes when Jesus met him, told him he was coming to
supper at his house and that Levi could even bring all his friends, basically
riff-raff people like me and Jaybo and Matth with an h. The guy quit his job,
fired up the back yard grill, enjoyed the evening, packed his toothbrush and
was never the same.
The
most recent call from Matth came from New Orleans, where he’d driven from his
Carolina base to pick up items he’d left in the South Louisiana trailer where
he’d lived while building sets for the upcoming “Terminator” movie and whatever
the newest “Fast and Furious” episode is. Matth does things like that. As part
of his job with Paramount Pictures years ago, he replaced the windows in Dr.
Phil’s office there on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. Somebody had to do it. I
recall that as being an interesting phone call he made from his Paramount
carpenter golf cart, right after he’d seen Mary Hart.
But
on this call, Matth was talking rather urgently about how he was heading my way
in north Louisiana, unrehearsed of course, and could I find anybody who might
be willing to work on his 1983 Ford Ranger diesel, stick shift, four-speed. “I’ve
lost reverse, and second gear is iffy,” he said, from what sounded like the
cockpit of the space shuttle during takeoff. The pedal was on the metal and he
was getting all he could out of this faithful 32-year-old automobile. Matth can
fix anything, so this was real trouble.
He
walked in that night wearing grease and a smile, the ’83 in the drive, panting.
The
next day we tried a couple of mechanics who looked at the truck as an
archeologist might look at the Holy Grail. They admired it, but dared not touch
it. And while an ace transmission man said he could repair the Wabash
Cannonball before he could repair an ’83 Ford Ranger diesel -- not a common model these days – he did offer
suggestions that Matth took. Matth’s ingenuity and some Band-Aids got him back
to Carolina. Of course, Matth could have taken his new truck the 2,000 miles to
Louisiana and back, but it gets only 12 miles to the gallon, and where’s the adventure
in that? Why not “save money” and take the ’83 that gets 38 miles a gallon? (“But
it has to be RUNNING,” I reminded Matth.)
A
nice man in a shade-tree fix-it shop near Taylortown, N.C., found the trouble
and got her running smooth again. Matth called to tell me the problem had been
a loose nut. Sounded right to me: Nut, with an h.
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