A couple of months before I went to see my parents for Thanksgiving in 1998, Perd decided to leave San Diego and go back to New Mexico after his wife Bird abandoned him. He was limited in terms of what he could bring home, so he gave me two large boxes of clothes and his bass guitar to hold on to. At the time, I thought I was going to be driving to New Mexico for Thanksgiving, so it wasn't going to be a problem for me to transport those items.
However, I started having some major car trouble and knew I wasn't going to be able to drive out. I was going to have to fly to New Mexico. I figured I would just ship the clothes to him. However, I opened the boxes and found that he put wet clothes in before handing them over to me. After a month of being in the boxes, mold had formed on the clothes. I knew there was no way I'd be able to send mold through the mail. I took it upon myself to wash and dry the clothes. He was lucky I had just gotten paid, but it cost more than $50 to wash and ship the clothes.
I was going to have to check the guitar on the plane to transport it. At this point, Abed had moved in with me. Abed got curious about Perd's bass and decided to play around with. Somehow, he messed it up. I was in a quandary. I didn't like the idea of Perd having enough faith in me to trust me with his instrument and I actually considered making him think that it got damaged on the plane. But I thought better of it and decided to take my lumps because he would have just gotten mad that I hadn't taken it on the plane with me.
When I called him, it turned out it was already broken. He was going to fix it when he got it back. Well, that was good. He gave me the address to bring it to when I was in Roswell. He was living on Eyman Street at the time, which was located on the old Air Force Base. He gave me directions on how to find it.
The day after I arrived in Artesia, my Mom drove me to Fort Sumner so I could go see Grandma Bend before Thanksgiving. We would be able to stop by and see Perd. I let him know the night before about what time to expect us. He was waiting by the side of the road. He was surprised to see my new look. We didn't really talk much. I just gave him the guitar and went on my way.
(I would see Perd a year later when I came back to New Mexico. He was giving with a new girlfriend, but he wasn't working. I didn't have any more contact with him until a few months ago, when I found him on Facebook (under a different name). I sent him a friend request and he accepted. But we still haven't had any real contact, aside from liking each others' posts from time to time. He may be with the same woman I met in 1999. He's still active in music and has a band that releases new material and shoots videos. It looks like everyone is having a blast.)
I don't remember much about the 1998 visit with Grandma Bend. I know we had lunch, but it wasn't special, aside from her seeing the new me. On the way back, Mom needed to stop by Roswell and see someone. She was assisting with a foster agency and there was a little girl she needed to check on. She called and got the address where she was located. It happened to be Eyman Street (but a different address from where Perd was). She was glad we already knew the location. When she went in, the little girl was scared and hid, even though my Mom had brought a little present for her. Mom just had to make sure everything was good at the house and left. I didn't get to go in.
I spent Thanksgiving Day at Dad's house. Gred's son Tad was there. The times I had seen him before, he didn't have much to say to me. But we actually communicated extensively for the first time. I was surprised. However, I'm certain it had to do with the fact that my hair was now shorter than his. His mother always told me about he was buying all those hair growth formulas and putting them on his head because his hairline was irreversibly receding.
This was also the Thanksgiving vacation in which I went to see Orld. He was drunk and couldn't stop talking about the fact that I'd shaved my head. I got mad about it and decided not to see him anymore. He tried to connect with me at my Dad's funeral in October of 2016. He came up to me and paid his respects to my father. He asked how he could get a hold of me. I told him we were staying at La Quinta Inn in Artesia. He could try to call me there. However, we had the phone in the room unplugged because my son had a tendency to play with it. Before we left the hotel, I plugged the phone back in. From what I could tell, there was no indication that any messages had been left. I don't know if he tried to call and decided to not leave a message.
There wasn't anything notable about the remainder of my vacation. I returned to San Diego and started living life as a new person with a different haircut. I got a lot of shocked looks from my friends who had never seen me with short hair in the seven years that I'd lived there.
And while I had planned to start growing it out again after I reached 40, that never happened. By that time, I was romantically involved with someone who didn't find guys with long hair attractive. This truly was the end of an era.
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