PAYING SOME ATTENTION TO LINDY

A man I know died a couple of months ago. I had bartended at his local watering hole off and on for more than a dozen years or so. He was 86 years of age when he passed, which holds a small irony as the expression “86” in bar language means “You’re out of here.” His name was Grant but everyone called him Lindy, and never did I see him do anything that would warrant his being 86’d from a bar. He was a talkative man, short in stature, unassuming, alone most of the time. Lindy volunteered to visit fellow veterans in nursing homes, and he went to VFW meetings downtown. He attended the occasional Dodger game with friends, had a yearly $10.00 football bet on USC to beat UCLA with a fellow regular, watched Laker games with interest on the bar television . Though an ex-smoker, he was known to sneak a drag or two now and then.

Raised in Wyoming, Lindy flew planes and fought in World War II, moved to L.A. after the war, got married and divorced here in the usual order, and never mentioned to me anything about his religion or lack thereof. The only name-dropping I ever heard him do was to proclaim he had gone to the same high school as Jerry Buss, who was behind him some years.

It was too cold in Wyoming, Lindy used to say. Too cold and too hard. Los Angeles was just fine with him.

I first met him in the early 1980’s at a neighborhood bar that did not outlast that curious decade. That watering hole stumbled to its death by 1987—when it closed Lindy migrated to where I worked down the boulevard: a neighborhood bar and restaurant that was neither sophisticated nor cool but was home for many in its own imperfect way. Lindy would often talk and talk to me while I bartended, about politics, sports, the weather. There were also other regulars he might speak with on any number of forgettable nights, and among the regulars thousands of words were sounded, and glasses raised, and birthdays celebrated with pieces of cake and slightly awkward attempts at singing the birthday song. We got him a Wyoming Cowboys baseball cap one year—he put it on his head quicker than you could say Casper.

And so the seasons passed, and time did its little number on all of us. I moved out of the neighborhood, and left bartending behind as well. Lindy grew older until he became forgetful and frail. He had a brother in Florida who was quite elderly himself, but that was all the blood family he had left (a step-son had left some time ago for Idaho and could not be reached). Lindy and his brother came from Norwegian stock, and long lives were common in their family: their mother lived to be 98. A couple of friends, Dave and Richard whom he knew from the bar, looked after him, took him to doctor appointments and to lunch at the neighborhood diner once a week or so. Richard would call and check on him: he dialed him some months back only to find Lindy’s phone had been shut off for lack of payment. Lindy would forget to pay bills. Finally, when Lindy became so forgetful that Dave and Richard were concerned about his leaving the stove on or remembering to eat, the two men told Lindy what was what.

Back when visiting those elderly veterans in convalescent homes and the like, Lindy had been offended by the conditions, the lousy food and the smell, the artlessness of life on the government cheap. He had vowed to himself he would never go to one of those places. Dave and Richard sat down and told him he had enough money, between his Social Security and military stipend to move into a facility that was cleaner, had better food, and would be close to his neighborhood. He resisted at first, thinking of those sad places he had seen first hand, but was at last moved, and that was that.

A couple of months later Lindy passed away in his sleep. If you live you will die, and for this there is no cure. Death is the most democratic of events, and does not discriminate based upon religion or ethnicity or height or weight or how much gum you chewed in school. You are on the ride just like everybody else: I imagine Lindy on the Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier, smiling, probably a little nervous, wanting a beer and a smoke. Some of us are that way. The ride comes to a stop and you get off, and where next you wander is a mystery.

A small memorial was held for Lindy at the bar, and many who knew him spoke and raised a glass in his honor. I could not attend, but thought about him. Next to me on my desk is a small tea light candle that’s been spent: it’s the one I lit for Lindy. I think of Arthur Miller’s recent passing, and his Death of a Salesman admonishment “Attention must be paid to this man” and I think that’s about right. Lindy wasn’t spectacular or funny or profound or any of a thousand characteristics that get a person remembered: he just was what he was, and now he is gone. Lindy got off the ride, and the world hasn’t been the same since. These words are my way of paying attention.

So long, Lindy. Even though I’m a UCLA fan, I’m glad you won your last bet on the Trojans.

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the image of the ferris wheel came from here: http://www.sos.state.il.us/kids/wheel2.jpg

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