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Fuck those trees and fuck you too - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 12/19/2011 2:00 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
I wrote about co-worker and good friend Ol' Charles before in my blog category and hopefully soon to be book, Jobs of Bob. But my relationship with him bears a visit in this book too - that's how important his influence on me was. This episode however, I must agonizingly live with 'til the day I die.
Almost from the first day of my almost 10 year stint with the City of Dallas, I kept crossing paths with a guy named Charles. We were not too different in age. We had seen the same history pass before our televisions. We both started with the City about the same time. We were both married - a once social norm that even by 1980, was already becoming a quaint custom from a bygone era.
Ol' Charles and I weaved in and out of being in the same work crews, being under some of the same supervisors, and traveling through time in the same department divisions. We traveled in time using the same maintenance equipment and taking care of the same city parks and property. And perhaps most influential on us both, we worked with the same characters and "actors" - as academia would say. We shared the same tragic comedy in real time.
And as well, Charles lived just down the road from me. Our work service center was just down the road in the other direction. We were never far apart as compared to other city employees that drove 75 miles to get to work. We actually lived in, worked in, and experienced our neighborhood together.
Ol' Charles could be an antagonist - but, I came to enjoy his crass outlook that departed from the yes-men and perpetually obfuscated environment of government work. I eventually began to look forward to what he might say about any given subject. He for all practical purposes, became a very good friend.
About the time I had enough of working for the City and was about to embark on my own business, Ol' Charles had some health issues and had missed a week of work here and there.
Charles was one of the last people I talked to that final day I worked for the City. That last conversation with him has always haunted me. Charles had come back from yet another close call with his health. We were sitting on a picnic table in front of the office to our service barn. It was February in Dallas, but hints of spring come around early in that part of the country. The sun was getting warm. Charles looked tired, but did brighten up a bit when talking about getting back to work. He commented that while he was in the hospital, he had hoped to get back and dive into a tree planting project.
I had become bitter over the years with the whole municipal government play house. To me, someone was probably running for reelection and had commissioned new flowering trees to be placed in strategic locations to "calm" the public perception of city property, and everything municipal; hence, manipulating the greater collective public demeanor in regards to their leaders and and said leaders constant mucking up of just about everything municipal.
So, with little thought, I blurted out, "Fuck those trees...and fuck you too."
Charles looked at me a bit sad, even hurt, but replied as he always did, and said what he always said, "Boy...you are a crazy mother fucker." Then came that familiar chuckle I knew so well.
My attention was diverted and I moved on to another person and subject. It never dawned on me how precarious and fragile life could be. And to think, I had been in the Army at the end of the 'Nam era. I should have known better by a long shot.
Years later I realized just how important the social activity of just plain getting back to work could be, after I my self, almost died a couple times during various hospital visits. For all practical purposes I would die a couple times. But, on that day with Charles, now so long ago, the charm of appreciating simple things like planting a tree after a near death experience was lost on me.
About a week after I left the employ of the City, another friend of mine called with an urgent rambling to tell me Charles's medical condition had suddenly got the best of him. He had left work one day not feeling so good. The next day he was going to try to come in at noon...,
....he never made it in - he died.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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