l i f e
the polyester salesman
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.
"Why?"
"He was in despair."
"What about?"
"Nothing."
Doesn't that just about sum it up, eh?. Ernest Hemingway wrote that piece of dialog in the 1920's. It comes from a story titled "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" something old Ernest really believed in. He felt a man needed such a space in order to be. He felt that without it life wasn't much worth living.
He killed himself one warm July morning in 1961in Ketchum, Idaho with his favorite shotgun. I guess he was all out of well-lit spaces.
Ray Bradbury wrote about a man driving down a dusty Idaho highway and running across a bent, overweight, disheveled, old man. The driver offered the old man a better trip than the one he was on. He offered him a plane crash on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Hemingway accepted the offer. I rather like that ending. I think we all wish our heros well in the end (even if they do bad things). Hell, heros aren't perfect. At least not mine anyway. But then my heros were/are all real people. And we all have flaws. But what I'd like to talk about isn't a clean well-lit place for that isn't where I find solice. I'd like to talk about the fact that everybody has one, some sort of clean well-lit memory, that makes all the fumes, anger, pointed remarks, dissapointment, and bitterness worth while; and I'd like to tell you about mine.
Mine is love, but not just any kind of love, because for a long time I couldn't face true love. The kind where another person is involved. No, I, like any good American boy loved baseball. I wasn't good at it. In fact I was the only kid I knew who struck out in Tee-ball, but this is the rub...my Dad was coach. I loved that. My Dad kept all the equipment. All the balls and gloves and bats. He kept them in a drawstring cotton bag all worn and rubbed red with North Carolina clay. I loved that more. But what I loved most, what really kept me around through some tough times, what keeps me standing today is this, the ride home after practice.
Dad drove a 1966 MGB roadster (I own a 1962 MGA which I know is simply
an extension of my love for his car and the history with it) with no top.
After practice he would drag the balls and bats and gloves and dump them
into the trunk of the "B". Then he'd let me climb in with them (I was
a very small child). I rode home in the trunk many days. We didn't always
take the same way and it was always dark and smelled of oil, gasoline,
and baseball, but no matter where we went or how long it seemed, or how bad
I'd played that day, I knew that soon my Dad, my Father, my hero the polyester
salesman, would open that trunk and let me out in the safety of our
own backyard. And even at that young age I knew that to be what I did
then and always will consider to be true, clean, well-lit
love.
goodnight 12.02.97
