You Can’t Sit Down
In the 5th grade, our teacher would read aloud for us after lunch. She read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and some story that had a character named “Old Bogs”. I thought that was a very funny name and in a cruel thought decided it would be a good nickname for my friend Larry. I conspired with another friend to pin it on him, but neither of us knew how to begin. Finally, I came up with the idea of saying “Boggggggsssss” in a low guttural voice any time he said anything to us, and instructed my co-conspirator to do the same. The second time I did this (I think it all was in retaliation for being “Herman” myself, after my father), he mimicked me back and said “Foggggggsssss” in a low guttural voice.
By the time we left the 5th grade it had become a ritual. We’d look each other in the eye, tilt our heads to one side, and say “Foggggggsssss” whenever things got a little silly. This continued through high school.
A year after graduating, Larry volunteered for the draft. He went to “Asia” as we called it then, it was before it became “Vietnam”. Like Rayne’s Uncle, he was different when he came back.
I lived in Findlay, OH in early 1965, a few blocks down the street from The Old Dutch Tavern, where they had Old Dutch beer on tap, made with water right out of the nearby Blanchard River, which some said was the inspiration for the barbershop quartet favorite, Down By The Old Mill Stream. Larry had been an easy goin’ sort of dude, but he wasn’t that night a few months after he came back.
If I said “Asia”, he’d say, “That farmer, out there in the rice paddy, you don’t know, you just don’t know…” Then he’d shake his head and glance over his shoulders to see if it was safe at the bar. He joked about the cracking sound made by a bullet flying just over your helmet, a sonic boom, it's long gone by the time you hear it, you don't hear the one that gets you. "Those boys over there, they're giving their all..." He kept playing The Sound Of Silence on the jukebox, over and over. That farmer, shook his head…”The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls…and tenement halls”, that line, shook his head again. He never sat down, couldn't, he said, kept glancing over his shoulder. That farmer. Shook his head. That line. Those boys. Never sat down. Hello darkness, my old friend.
I saw Larry again in 1982. He sat at the bar during our high school reunion, along with Mike, who also had been through two divorces by then. Larry told me how the “old lady” had taken all the property and all the money. “You got burned,” I say.
“Foggggggsssss” he said and we both tilted our heads and laughed.
5:32:02 PM 
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Coconut Curry Chicken with Potatoes
Un-Inspectors...I mean...