It took a couple of minutes for me to know who he was or whether I actually knew him, but eventually the dime dropped: This was the good-natured, neatly-kept, peppery and ill-informed 80-year-old who would stop by the Saturday morning peace picket line I used to stand on. There, he would rag another picket, Bill, and me, with his confused conservative claptrap before moving on to breakfast at Jake's, a nearby restaurant where it used to be possible to buy a couple of old-time greasy fried eggs for a price that wasn't as undeservedly-precious as those found in the other tourist-beckoning eateries on Main Street.
When I finally realized who Jack was and where I knew him from, the next question was, why had he called me up? I had always liked Jack when I saw him on Saturday mornings, but it was not a friendliness I would have expected to inspire a phone call.
Jack started off by joking that he was calling to urge me to vote for the "right candidate" on Tuesday, which is Election Day here in the United States. I knew he meant Mitt Romney and he knew I would never vote for such a man, so we kidded around a little about how his vote would cancel out mine. But that still didn't explain why Jack had called.
Finally, spliced almost diffidently into the conversation, the reason emerged. Several months ago, Jack had gone into the hospital for an operation on his prostate. Before he went, he and Bill and I had done the old farts' organ recital, swapping tales of one medical bump in the road or another ... trying to buck Jack up. A week or two after the operation, I stopped into Jack's shoe store on Main Street to find out how things had gone. He really did feel much better and we had gabbed for perhaps half an hour.
"How many guys would do that?" he asked rhetorically yesterday. "Not many. You really are a good guy."
So ... it was a thank-you call. And I was touched. I hadn't thought anything of the visit, but Jack obviously felt moved enough to make the effort to get my phone number from other peace pickets and then call.
And somehow Jack's assertion that I was a good guy summed up the small relationship that had been nourished in the little meetings and banterings on Main Street: If Jack and I were locked in a room together, we would probably piss each other off enormously; but the important part between us was a sense of good-guy-dom that went beyond ideology or perhaps came before it. I wouldn't hesitate to call him an asshole and he would no doubt do the same for me ... but assholes are the way of the world -- no biggie -- and good guys are not.
After Jack got out the reason for his call, the two of us segued back to our superficial banter. Obama, he said, was a Muslim and during every visit to the Middle East, Obama had not stood four-square for the United States. Moreover (and this was uttered in conspiratorial tones), if Obama won the election on Tuesday and if he were subsequently assassinated, then Jack was prepared to feel relieved: "The anti-Christ" would have been dispatched. When I told him I planned to vote not just for Obama but also for the "Death With Dignity Act" ballot issue, Jack bridled: "A religious person could not do that," he said flatly. Only God has the right to take a life. "You mean a Catholic could not do that," I corrected. Jack is a Catholic. That caused him to pause before saying with some merit, "Well, a lot of religions feel that way." Jack has an attention span required for fear-centered conservative claptrap ... it's no good trying to engage in longer, more considered conversation. But Jack is also old enough to know ... good guys come first.
And after a while, the banter petered out. We had done on the telephone what we had previously done on Main Street ... a little banter in which there was an understanding that a person's most fervent beliefs, political or religious, were OK as far as they went, but they could not be allowed to touch or override the important stuff ... the good guys of the world.
You help me. I help you. What comes in between is just icing on the cake.
As my then-young son wrote on a hand-made birthday card he once gave me, "We luv etchuther."
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