A Recollection

I bring this up after reading on a friend's site that his father recently passed away. I was a bit more surprised than I expected to be, maybe because I'm one of the few friends who ever met and interacted with the man. I bought one of the best cars I've ever owned from him, talked about getting better gas mileage out of a Cadillac, laughed at some of the things he mailed to my friend. But the first thing that popped into my mind was the time I scared his real estate agent.

His house was a big expensive one in a nice neighborhood. He didn't live there. The house was on the market; my friend was staying there in one room until it was sold. I happened to be homeless, and in my mind all those empty rooms in that beautiful house were going to waste while I was sleeping in my car in the WalMart parking lot. My friend would let me crash there sometimes but if his father was coming to town I had to go elsewhere. He didn't want others staying there (understandably) and I don't think he liked me all that much anyway. More than once his car would pull in unexpectedly and I'd have to act like I was just visiting. I don't think he ever believed it though.

There was one time... I'd been without sleep too long and had no other place to go, so decided to stay in the empty guest room at the house. There was a bed with a blanket though I'd have been fine with a patch of floor at that point... I was sleeping more soundly than usual and didn't hear the realtor, potential buyers in tow, arrive the next morning until they came in to look at the room I happened to be in. I finally heard them and bolted straight upright in the bed, hair and blanket flying. Until that point they hadn't noticed me at all... whoops! There were some exclamations and muttering from the group and a hasty exit to another part of the house. In my waking discombobulation I thought the best course of action for me was to hide, so I dove under the bed, pulled my bag with me, and stayed there until I heard the cars leave. I always wondered what the agent said to the father about that little incident.

I really miss that car, and that neat house. I still have one of the garage-door remotes. And a memory of an odd man who probably let me get away with a lot more than he could have.