Bummers...
- Thread starter Fatrat
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It has happened, moar than once.
The most painful, was a guy - a fellow drunk, back in the Bad Old Days, but a good guy at heart. When I needed help he was there.
But my life was coming apart - me in my late twenties, he about five years older; we met, working at the same government offices...I was out of work and the ex was tossing me, and I showed up to the Navy recruiter, and raised my right hand. "Do me!"
Meantime, he had his own quirks. In addition to his own liquor issue, he had a sex problem. He was white but grew up in a neighborhood that was almost-100-percent black. He wasn't poor; his grandparents owned a nice house in the neighborhood. They didn't believe in White Flight; the house was paid for and they thought the neighborhood, with imaginative streets, and architecturally-interesting homes, would survive.
So all the girls he knew as a kid, were black girls. Yeah. Jungle Fever.
But he wasn't onboard with ghetto behavior or morality. So...he was on a long search for a decent black woman.
He never really found one, but he did marry one, and she didn't much like his drinking. Or him, I guess. I know she didn't like me, much. I was pretty-much shoved off to the side.
So I was in the Navv, in Californistan, and then in the great big sand-box that's now jammed up by the water toll-gate. I called him a few times. He couldn't call me; cellphones were expensive toys. I didn't have one.
I got out, didn't go back to Ohio. Not for some years. In Colorado, got into railroading; then traveled for a couple years; and then stumbled into a railroad slot right in Cleveland. I was thinking about my aging, ill parents. I was also thinking, a drinking problem doesn't go well with a railroad career. Bob and I were BAD NOOZE together.
I never reached out. Not until after I left CSX, and then got pushed out of the Canadian National system, and just before I started with Montana Rail Link. I went looking for what he was up to.
It was easier, back 14 years ago. I stumbled upon an obituary notice. Very short. 2003...long before I left CSX.
I also came across a filing for divorce, six months before.
Then, I went looking for the house. The house was gone. The lot had been cleared and was being mowed...by someone. A corner lot. It was in what Cleveland called its "Land Bank." No recorded private owner.
I couldn't find out why the house was demolished. Did it burn down? Bob was a smoker. Was he drunk and smoking in bed? Was the house torched? Had he been murdered in bed? His only remaining relative was a sister he was estranged from. Did she just abandon the burned-out structure?
Or was it sitting empty, torched...or just looted and destroyed by squatters. Google Maps was no help - the oldest Street View showed the lot vacant.
To this day I don't know. I don't know if it would have done him any good to have connected. It probably would have cost me my job, though....
The most painful, was a guy - a fellow drunk, back in the Bad Old Days, but a good guy at heart. When I needed help he was there.
But my life was coming apart - me in my late twenties, he about five years older; we met, working at the same government offices...I was out of work and the ex was tossing me, and I showed up to the Navy recruiter, and raised my right hand. "Do me!"
Meantime, he had his own quirks. In addition to his own liquor issue, he had a sex problem. He was white but grew up in a neighborhood that was almost-100-percent black. He wasn't poor; his grandparents owned a nice house in the neighborhood. They didn't believe in White Flight; the house was paid for and they thought the neighborhood, with imaginative streets, and architecturally-interesting homes, would survive.
So all the girls he knew as a kid, were black girls. Yeah. Jungle Fever.
But he wasn't onboard with ghetto behavior or morality. So...he was on a long search for a decent black woman.
He never really found one, but he did marry one, and she didn't much like his drinking. Or him, I guess. I know she didn't like me, much. I was pretty-much shoved off to the side.
So I was in the Navv, in Californistan, and then in the great big sand-box that's now jammed up by the water toll-gate. I called him a few times. He couldn't call me; cellphones were expensive toys. I didn't have one.
I got out, didn't go back to Ohio. Not for some years. In Colorado, got into railroading; then traveled for a couple years; and then stumbled into a railroad slot right in Cleveland. I was thinking about my aging, ill parents. I was also thinking, a drinking problem doesn't go well with a railroad career. Bob and I were BAD NOOZE together.
I never reached out. Not until after I left CSX, and then got pushed out of the Canadian National system, and just before I started with Montana Rail Link. I went looking for what he was up to.
It was easier, back 14 years ago. I stumbled upon an obituary notice. Very short. 2003...long before I left CSX.
I also came across a filing for divorce, six months before.
Then, I went looking for the house. The house was gone. The lot had been cleared and was being mowed...by someone. A corner lot. It was in what Cleveland called its "Land Bank." No recorded private owner.
I couldn't find out why the house was demolished. Did it burn down? Bob was a smoker. Was he drunk and smoking in bed? Was the house torched? Had he been murdered in bed? His only remaining relative was a sister he was estranged from. Did she just abandon the burned-out structure?
Or was it sitting empty, torched...or just looted and destroyed by squatters. Google Maps was no help - the oldest Street View showed the lot vacant.
To this day I don't know. I don't know if it would have done him any good to have connected. It probably would have cost me my job, though....
Condolences on your losses folks. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I only ever had a few really good friends and it's the nature of life that we eventually find ourselves on different paths. I've know countless acquaintances though.
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Tangentially related I guess, but my .. step niece/sister in law? passed away a few days ago by way of suicide. She was my wife's step sister's daughter that had been adopted by her grandmother (my wife's step mother). I was not particularly close to her. I remember her as a pre-teen girl that was always full of wonder and cheer. She changed a lot in her teenage years running around with bad crowds doing drugs and who knows what. Young adulthood was just a couple of decades of more poor decisions (in and out of jail, rehab, mental facility, boyfriends in jail for murder or six feet under because they were murdered). She was recently institutionalized after she strangled and drowned her pet poodle and cooked and ate (some of) it. She was released from the mental facility and immediately hooked back up with some meth dealer/user friend before leaving our world. Such a waste.
Sorry to hear about all that.
With situations like that, and they happen far too often, I always wonder that if anything could have been different in their formative years that might have helped them learn to avoid stuff like that?
.....or is it just inevitable for some people?
All I know for sure, is that it would be unbelievably painful to have to witness stuff like that happen to a child you watched, or even helped to grow up, during their formative years of early life.