Vanguard of the Geezer Posse

A Story by capmango

Copyright © 2004 Glenn R. Wichman. Sometimes the past calls out to the future.

Cynthia’s Eats, Wednesday, September 6^th, 2000. 2:30 p.m.

It was the second day in a row that the restaurant had had only a single lunch customer. Mike was straightening up the counter, and contemplating flipping the “Open” sign over for the day. Directly outside on Main Street, a Champagne-colored Honda Goldwing with a sidecar decelerated precipitously into the diagonal parking space, halting half an inch before the curb. “There’s something you don’t see every day,” said Mike to the empty room. Three guys got off the bike and dropped their helmets in the sidecar.

The rider was a tall man with snow-white hair and a craggy face, clearly in his 70s by the look of him, but his swift movements showed no signs of age. He took a small book from his leather jacket and flipped through it, then headed up the street, then back past the shop, and back again, searching for something. He was followed by his two companions " both of them teenage boys, but one almost a grown-up and the other still scrawny and pimpled.

After two trips past Cynthia’s, he pushed open the door, causing a little bell to tinkle. “Hey, buddy,” said the man, “do you know if this place used to be the Sugar Shoppe?”

“I know that it did,” said Mike. “Come on in, can I get you anything?”

The man didn’t answer immediately. He came all the way inside and turned in a full circle, looking at everything in the restaurant. The boys’ eyes were wandering aimlessly, hoping to latch onto anything that wouldn’t bore them.

“Man-oh-man,” said the man, “there ain’t nothing the same here except that marble counter top.” So far he seemed to be talking to himself, but now he addressed the two boys, who looked like they were trying to look like they were listening. “This brown floor, it used to be black-and-white checkerboard. And the walls were white, not green. And there was a beautiful old Wurlitzer jukebox in that corner over there. The front of this counter had a big rack full o’ candy bars and such.” He tapped the counter, next to the register. “Right here, there was a little wire spinny rack full o’ postcards. I bought one here and sent it to yer great gramma. And the cash register was gold, and had the numbers that popped up and a big handle on the side like a slot machine. What happened to that register, buddy?” This last was addressed to Mike.

Mike shrugged. The old man had gotten a few details wrong: The floor had been all white, not checkerboard. The jukebox had been in the opposite corner, and it wasn’t a Wurlitzer and it sure wasn’t beautiful. Still, the old man did a pretty good job of describing the Sugar Shoppe during the days when Mike first started hanging out there. But Mike didn’t recognize the man at all.

“Hi, I’m Mike Marks.” His outstretched hand was met by a frighteningly firm grip.

“Eldon Schmidt,” said Eldon Schmidt, “these are my grandboys, Mark and Scott.”

Scott, the younger boy, did a semi-salute then sat himself down at the farthest table, and looked out the window across Main Street at the used record store. Mark sat on a stool at the counter. “Could I get a Coke, please?”

“Did you used to live here?” Mike asked Eldon. “Nope,” came the answer, “didn’t pass through here but once, September sixth, 1950. Fifty years ago today.” He opened up his little leather-bound book. The pages within were handwritten in that distinctive uneven flow that only a fountain pen makes. “I was driving a 1949 De Soto from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Modesto, California.” He pointed at a page thick with illegible lettering. “Stopped here and had me a patty melt and a Coke, put a nickel in the jukebox and played ‘In the Mood,’ bought an Oh Henry bar and sent a postcard to Momma, and headed off west. She was a beautiful green-grey De Soto. From the front, she looked like a shark about to feed. Had ‘er up til 1962.” Eldon looked at Mike, eyebrows up, face smiling, clearly waiting to be asked something particular. Mike brought out a Coke for Mark, and then took the lure.

“So what was so special about this trip that you wrote it down in your book there?” asked Mike. He noticed Mark stare up at the ceiling and sigh. Eldon plopped down on a counter stool and said, “Let me tell you a story, buddy!”

“In 1944 I was eighteen years old and I joined the Marines so as I wouldn’t get drafted into the Army. Lived all my life til then in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Marines put me in Camp Pendleton, north o’ San Diego. On leave from there, I’m in San Diego at a dance and I fall in love at first sight with this Spanish girl, named Consuela. Ever heard such a pretty name? Con " sue " la.

“She was pretty in that way that girls in the ‘40s were. Prettier than girls ever have been since, don’t you know? She had a look that could put thoughts in a man’s head, and didn’t look like a tramp to do it. She had style. She had wavy black hair and dark eyes. I got her to dance every dance with me and then I got her to write down her address and phone number on a piece of paper. She put it down on the paper and drew a little heart, if you can believe that. And I folded it up and put it in my pocket…” he patted the breast pocket of his leather jacket
”… and I told her I’d call but we was shipped out before I got a chance to call. I sure did write her a lot of letters, though. And I kept her note here in my pocket every single day.” In the corner, Scott slid down in his chair til his butt was just barely on the edge of the seat.

“So next thing ya know it’s February of ’45, and I’m there with the Marines on Iwo Jima. Buddy, you never seen such a thing as that. I’m on the beach all of ten minutes when a jap bullet goes: Through my shirt…” he demonstrated the bullet’s trajectory with a finger, and put meaningful pauses between each statement: “…through the note…through my skin…through my left lung…and right out the other side!

“I come to a month later in a hospital in Chicago, so there’s my career as a Marine. A couple months after that they finally send me back to Green Bay, and one day they send me a box and there’s all my stuff.” Anticipating what was coming next, Mark buried his face in his arms and let out a quiet “Oh, God.”

“Well believe it or not,” and here he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, “there was the note!” He pulled a piece of paper from the pocket, and unfolded it onto the counter. The edges of it were yellowed note paper, but the center was a deep, dark brown. The paper had been folded four ways, each of the four quadrants had a ragged hole through its center. You could see that there had been some writing on it, but after the bullet holes and the blood, there wasn’t enough left over to read.

“Well there’s nothing I can do with that, now is there?” he asked, poking the note. “Can’t read a thing. And for the life of me, I can’t remember her address, though I musta sent her half a dozen letters back in the war. I think I mighta hit my head on a rock when I got shot. So anyway, I tried calling information and such, but I never could figure out what become of her. So I settled myself down in Green Bay for the next five years, selling John Deere tractors, and I met some pretty girls, but none of em had eyes like Consuela so I just figured I wasn’t gonna get married.”

“And then.” He reached into another pocket, and pulled out a yellowed envelope. “September One, Nineteen Fifty, this letter arrives from Mow-desto, California.” He held the letter out as if he wanted Mike to take a closer look, then he dramatically snapped it back. “Nope, you can’t see this one! But it’s a letter from Consuela sayin’ that if I’m the Eldon Schmidt that danced with her in San Diego in 1944, that I should come to Modesto, California and she would marry me. Can you believe that? Well, I was in Modesto inside a week, and we was married within another week of that. I sold John Deere tractors in Modesto, we had a little baby girl, and she grew up and had babies, and they grew up and there they are.” He gestured generally at his grandsons.

“You know, Consuela’s Momma never did let her get any of the letters I sent, cause she didn’t want her girl involved with a white boy, but somehow she just knew it was meant to be and never did give up on trying to find me.”

He smiled broadly and leaned on the counter, and said nothing for a bit. Mike was still working on a response. Presently, Eldon said, “Oh, and now see if I haven’t left out the whole point of telling you the story. Anyway, so I drove my ol’ De Soto out to California. I’d taken to writing a journal so I wouldn’t forget things, cause I got forgetful after the war, so I wrote down everything I did on that trip. Where I stayed and what I ate and everything. So the wife and I were gonna recreate the whole trip, mile by mile, on the fiftieth anniversary of the trip. But she passed on about two and a half years ago, so these fellas are my companions instead.”

“Tryin’ to recreate the trip is a hell of nuisance, though. Most of the road is gone, and most of the places are gone. And the ones that are left have changed so much I can’t hardly find ‘em. Do you still serve a patty melt?”

“It’s not on the menu anymore,” said Mike, “but I think I could whip one up.”

The boys wandered across the street to check out the record shop, and Mike and Eldon talked some more as Mike put together a patty melt. Between bites, Eldon spoke quite a bit about a group he belonged to called the Senior Motorcycle Touring Club, who amongst themselves went by “Geezers on Goldwings.”

“You start serving patty melts again, and I’ll tell my geezer posse to come on by and check you out.”

“Geezer posse?”

“That’s what the grandboys call em. All my motorcycle friends. We’re always looking for good ole places to drive to.”

The old man looked at his watch. “Well, better be puttin’ more road under me if I’m gonna make all the stops in this ol’ book! Awfully good to get to know ya!” Mike endured another killer handshake.

He headed out the front door and waved to the boys. They came back across the street. Scott got into the sidecar, but Mark ran quickly into the restaurant. “I just gotta tell you,” Mark said to Mike, “We love our grampa a lot, and we’re both having a blast on this trip. And his story’s a great one. But we hear it four times a day. Every day. Then it reruns in my dreams at night.”

Mike looked at him, curious as to why he was being told this. “I just didn’t want you to think we were bad grandchildren, that’s all.” Mike watched the boy head out the door and jump onto the back of the Goldwing. And he walked out and watched from the sidewalk as the motorcycle roared down Main Street and out of sight. And he walked back in the restaurant and flipped the “Open” sign around to “Closed”.

That evening, Mike relayed to Cynthia the story of Eldon and Consuela Schmidt, but he didn’t mention the plan that was brewing in his head.

The next morning he called Michelle’s cell phone. “Hey, Girl! How’s the world tour?”

“We knocked ‘em dead in Saint Cloud. We’re pulling into Duluth just now. Good thing you called today, cause once we get north of Duluth this phone’s not going to get a decent signal. So what’s up back in Tripoli?”

“Well, I think I’m having an idea. What would you think about loaning your old man some money?”