Remembering an Old Man on the Skids

I once worked odd jobs out of Manpower Temporary Services in Culver City, California. One day on the job old broken-down Carl Murray delivered himself of a memorable line.

"Bill, there was a time I was limber all over and stiff in one place. But now it's the other around."

Old Carl didn't like Levi jeans. "They ain't got no ball room." Those were the days before the 'Gentlemen's Cut.'

Motorcycles he always referred to as "murdercycles." One day we were digging up sunken tombstones in a local cemetery, a fit job for a  philosopher with his meditatio mori. Carl complained of the others that day who got the "gravy" jobs. But I found that breaking up concrete with a jackhammer was far worse than working with pick and shovel in a graveyard.  And decidedly less meditative.

After work we would knock back a few cans of Brew 102 in his Culver City flophouse room and I would listen to his stories.

"Bill, there are just three things in this life I crave: women,  cigarettes, and beer. In that order."