Mourning A Buddy

There are stages of life, and very often when we move on from a job, or a neighborhood, we lose track of people.

Mike was my boss back in 1991 on a crazy out-of-town job that found just three of us in Sioux City, Iowa in December and January.

Not exactly a dream road trip. It was the coldest I’ve ever been in my life, and I live in Buffalo!

We drank a lot beer on that trip. We visited a few gentlemen’s clubs and ate a trailer load of prime rib.

We laughed.

A lot.

I can still see the mischievous look on Mike’s face when a flight attendant explained to us that our plane wasn’t going to take off in the snowstorm and that they were going to try and book us into a hotel, but were short on rooms.

“I’ll bunk with you,” Mike told the beautiful flight attendant.

“I’d rather die in a fiery crash,” she said, without missing a beat.

We tortured Mike with that line over the next few years.

And Mike wasn’t a perfect guy. He drank a little too much. He suffered from some medical complications that he may have brought on himself.

He was about 15 years older than me…

…and yesterday I ran into a mutual buddy.

“How’s Mike?” I asked.

The guy’s expression changed, and I knew.

“Ahhh, when?”

“Last summer,” he said. “Was pretty sudden.”

On that trip, me and my buddy Pete left the rental car at a pizza parlor because we had locked the keys in the car.

We walked back to the hotel, and didn’t think much of it until the next morning, when Mike got up and went to the parking lot to get the car to go to the job.

I was the first guy to see Mike that morning.

“Good morning, dip shit,” Mike said. “Can you please explain to me what you and the other f***ing idiot did with the car?”

“It’s at Domino’s,” I said.

“And you expect me, a more than 50-year old man, with gout in both feet to walk to work, in zero degree temperatures?”

I didn’t have an answer to that question.

“I hate you,” he said. “Both of you morons.”

I can still see poor Mike limping his way down the hall.

He extended two raised middle fingers.

May he rest in peace.