Larry's blog

George Martin finished his miserable shift at the usual time and took the same bus that made 23 excruciating stops until it reached his station in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. Then there was the 14-block walk in the blistering July heat until he reached the humble, bungalow style house he had inherited from his mother a few years before. The house was aging and crumbling much the way he was at 57-years old. He looked and felt a lot older than his years. Forty years of manual labor will do that to a man, as his craggy, weather-beaten face will attest to. After forty years, he didn't have much to show for it, staying as the same job he started as a teenager. The kind of job usually done by immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean who were generally, much younger, faster and stronger than him. It was only a short matter of time when he couldn't do it anymore. Then he would have really nothing left, no family, friends, or money to live his few remaining years i...

Gary drove down the familiar twisted dirt roadways that snaked through the back woods of North Carolina. It reminded him of when his dad Rick first taught him to drive when he was 16. It felt so far away now in both years and location. A half century ago he thought, and a totally different world from the frenetic life he has long lived in LA. He regretted not coming back sooner, but there was always something preventing the trip and relations with his father cooled in recent years. The phone calls had become less frequent and they always seemed to end in a fight. Rick had become even more stubborn and set in his ways as he became an old man, with his old-fashioned views becoming even more out of step with the times. Gary always intended to come back, to have this big reconciliation, but he ran out of time. He got the horrible news that dad died of a sudden and massive heart attack the day before and that was that. There had been no warning. Sure, dad was 86, but he seemed so...