Environmental Products in The eye of every storm

My father spent most of his life drinking himself to death.

He’s alive. I saw him for the first time in six years. But he looks old. Gone is the vibrant vitality that marked his youthful indiscretions and in its place sits a battered old man. He’s aged twenty years in the last five. He can barely walk. Sometimes his right hand shakes and his sister thinks it may be the onset of Parkinsons. His skin sags beneath his jawline.

The same jokes he told twenty years ago made their cameo. I suspect this isn’t the nature of dad’s, but moreso the nature of people trapped in the same town, doing the same thing, with the same people for over fifty years.

This town, where I spent eighteen straight years growing into an adult, still has a maddening affect on me. It’s Deep South, and the people are slow. The world is fast and furious everywhere but here, and they stagger along at a snails pace, watching it all transpire with a strange fixation on keeping things as they were in the late 1950’s. The older I get the more i think I understand, but I’m not there yet.

Downtown, at a coffee/shop bar:

I saw an old friend, sitting there, wearing his same FEAR t-shirt, sporting the same beard, and drinking the same beer. It’s the same place I last saw him, nearly exactly. He sees me and says, “Hey man, how are you. I feel like I haven’t seen you in a few months.”

I say to him. Grady. I’ve been in The City for ten years. Not missing a beat he says, “Oh, you moved away? Cool, man.”

And that’s how it is here.

I spent almost all of the time with my parents. I love my mom and stepdad. We didn’t do much- just ate food. When we weren’t eating, we watched Gunsmoke, and How The West Was Won, and Bonanza. In years passed, the old western shows were mind-numbing. This time, I appreciated them, but I think I enjoyed sitting with them more, operating at a snails pace, and not worrying about all of the things.

There’s a great deal to unpack from this trip. I suspect it was the last time i’ll see my Father and my Grandmother alive. “North Augusta is getting big,” my Father said. “We have two Walmart’s now,” he continued, a strange pride gleaming in his sagging eyes.

Last updated December 29, 2019