The Hollow Men - Episode 32
Drew and Sam spend a few days with Robert and Barry in Corpus Christi and return home to Austin.
Last week in Episode 31 Sam and Drew's journey along the Texas Gulf Coast continues, Drew plays golf with a couple of salesman, and Stan the Skeleton Man returns with some messages for Drew.
The Hollow Men is the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas. If you have recently subscribed and like to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through the story line.
On to Corpus Christi
Monday morning we woke up early and went for a nice run near the motel. About 7:30 I walked down to the motel restaurant and got a large breakfast, three eggs over easy, sausage, bacon, hash browns, toast and iced tea, to bring back to the room. Sam enjoyed one egg and the sausage while I enjoyed the rest. After breakfast we watched the news for a few minutes, then loaded up the truck, checked out and drove towards Rockport.
We arrived in Rockport by 10:00 am. Seemed like a nice quiet resort town. We didn't stop, just kept driving and were in Corpus Christ by 10:30.
It took a few minutes to find Robert's house but by 10:50 we found it and had parked the truck on the street. Sam and I walked to the door and I knocked. A couple of minutes passed before Sam, then me, heard someone shuffling down the hallway. The door opened and Robert stood there looking at us. His hair was a mess, he looked a little tired but welcomed us in, motioning us to the kitchen where a pot of coffee was brewing.
“Long night last night. Restaurant closed about nine, bar closed at 12:00. Got home about 1:00 am. Caught up on most of my sleep, been up for about 30 minutes waiting for you.”
Robert talks in short, to the point sentences when he is tired.
The first hour we spent catching up with each other, on what we had heard about things in Odessa, and about Rick.
“I was in Odessa a couple of months back to see Rick and my parents. Rick was about the same. He hardly ever speaks, just hums a lot. Sometimes he seems like he's completely not there, other times I can tell he's listening to everything that is going on.”
I nodded my head, it didn't seem like there had been much progress.
Around noon the phone rang. It was Barry wanting to know if I had made it to town. We all decided to meet for lunch, well, of us save for Sam. After bringing in our stuff from the truck into the house I put Sam out in the backyard with some water and food. Robert and I met Barry for lunch in downtown Corpus Christi.
It was good seeing Barry, it had been awhile. He was pretty much the same as he was in high school, always a lot smarter than he gave the impression of. After lunch he told us to make sure and watch the 6:00 and 10:00 pm news so we could see his sports update.
The time spent with Robert and Barry reminded me how, over time, how little people change and yet at the same time how much a person really does change.
Let's take Robert, when I first met him he was a stoner, everything was a laugh to him and nothing was serious, then he flat out disappeared for a few years along with a few thousands of his parent's savings. I didn't care much for that Robert, thought he was a real dick. I don't have anything against stoners, or any other kind of screwup, as long as they are no harm to others. Robert messed with his parents and to some extent Rick. I didn't like that, and I didn't like that Robert.
Then Robert returns, determined to make amends and apparently clean. That Robert didn't talk much about what happened during his lost years. The Anders and Rick seemed accepting of this Robert. I didn't trust this Robert.
But Robert proved me wrong day after day. He didn't go back to his old set of friends, several of whom had gotten so stoned that they never left Odessa and worked at various jobs to keep enough cash around to enjoy a good high every once in awhile. He went to work as a waiter. That kept him busy at night and after a little while he took a class at Odessa College. Sort of like dipping your toe in a cold body of water, taking it small, seeing if one can stand the change, then going a little deeper. Robert kept working and going to school until he had saved some money and had a good 60 hours of college credits. He went off to Corpus Christi State University, continued working nights at a restaurant in Corpus, moved into management and went to school during the day. This Robert graduated from college, bought a house with Rick and is now a full time manager at a restaurant in Corpus.
Robert has gone through a lot of changes and is evidence that who you are at 15 years old is not a guarantee of who you will be as an adult. Yet, in some ways, this Robert is no different than the Robert I first met years ago. Robert, even through the stoner haze, had a dry, quiet, intelligent sense of humor. Now that Rick is in his own world and isn't too accessible, I can see how similar they both are. In a way, being friends with Robert helps keep my friendship with Rick alive even if Rick isn't in the real world.
All right, so Robert shows that people can change, but then, in another way, maybe he didn't change at all. Maybe it was all the other crap in his life that kept me, him and others from seeing how he really was.
Then there's Barry, I first met him in the tenth grade. Barry is evidence of the theory that who you are at 15 is who you really are. On the surface Barry hasn't changed much at all, a good friend, practical, smart and loyal. He makes sense as a sportscaster, he knows his sports and has a good presence on the television. He seems to have found his place in the world, not that he was ever looking for it. Barry is one of those guys who seems to know where his life will lead from early on. That doesn't mean he hasn't had a few bumps in the road, he just seems to not notice the bumps, or let them affect him.
Put them both together and I ought to learn something from it all. Maybe it is that we are who we are and that growing up is about accepting that, maybe even exploring or exploiting that. In Robert's case the drugs got in the way for a long time. Barry, for whatever reason, seems to be one of those people who sees clearly early on, understands who they are and where they are going.
So what does all this mean? I don't know. I don't know if I'm right or wrong. If I'm right I don't know what it means to me. I sure as hell don't know who I am supposed to be.
The best I can do right now is go for a run with Sam. That's the good thing about Sam, she like to run, she know who she is, she knows what she likes to do and she seems to accept me as I am and doesn't ask for anything more.
Monday Sam and I spent the day with Robert. On Tuesday Barry came over and the four of us hung out and went around town. Wednesday morning the four of us headed out to the beach. Between Robert, Barry and me, Sam had more than enough Frisbees to chase and waves to bark at. By 2:00 pm she was exhausted and lay on her side on the sand panting while the three of us watched the waves and drank a few beers. We headed back to Robert's house and while he cleaned and got ready for work, Sam slept and Barry and I caught up on our afternoon television. Robert left for work a little after 5:00 pm leaving Sam in charge of the house. He didn't really trust either Barry or me. Can't blame him too much for that.
Barry and I had pizza delivered to the house and spent the evening drinking beer, eating pizza, watching television and talking. Sam settled for eating pizza and listening. Around midnight we called it a night and Barry drove home. He had to work the next day so Sam and I told him goodbye and that if he was ever in Austin to drop by and see us.
After Barry left Sam and I went to bed.
The next morning Sam woke up at 6:00 am and wanted outside. I let her out and fell asleep on the couch until Sam woke me up to let her back in. It had started raining, not a hard rain, but steady and Sam doesn't like rain so she made sure I heard her. I let her in and she shook her herself dry, then lay down on the rug in the living room and fell fast asleep. I laid down on the couch and fell asleep myself. Around noon I woke to Robert making coffee in the kitchen. Sam was already up and was keeping an eye on Robert just in case he made something that she would like to eat.
We talked while Sam and I packed our stuff up. Around 2:30 I loaded the truck up and we said goodbye to Robert and Corpus Christi.
We arrived in Austin a little after 7:00 pm and pulled up in our driveway at 7:15 pm. It was good to be home.
After a quick dinner we both went to bed and slept hard. The next day I washed all of my traveling clothes. Saturday came a hard rain, over two inches that day, and nearly a half inch on Sunday. My vacation to the coast, to the land of bent trees had ended. It had been a good one.
Passive income
It had now been over three years since I had a paying job, but I was doing all right. I was in a state where my money was working for me, and my money was doing quite well, thank you.
I still had a good amount of money in CD's and used the same practice of buying six month CD's, letting them mature and rolling most of the money right back into fresh CD's. This gave me the flexibility of twice a year having access to a fair amount of cash but it was also how I had spending money. My expenses weren't much, my monthly mortgage, utilities, gas and upkeep for the truck, school expenses, food expenses and other miscellaneous stuff. I kept a fairly accurate budget and every six months would take out my estimate of the next six months expenses, plus 20% out of the maturing CD's. Save for around $3000, I would deposit the whole amount into my Fidelity Magellan account and let it earn some more money until I needed it.
Fidelity Magellan was my main investment vehicle and it had done extremely well. Since Uncle Bill introduced it to Rick and I in 1981 the annual returns on our investment were nothing to complain about. Over 16% in 1981, then a crazy 48% annual return in 1982, followed by nearly 39% in 1983. My first full year of non-work, 1984, was a little disappointing, with an annual return of a little over 2%, but 1985 had been great so far and it looked like the year might end up with a return comfortably over 30%. Think about that for a moment, other than reinvesting my gains, I hadn't been making regular deposits to Fidelity Magellan since I had shut down VP Tanks. Not counting the twice a year deposit from matured CD's to cover living expenses, my investment in Fidelity Magellan in 1983 had more than tripled by the fall of 1985. I was making money, or my money was making me money. I was getting richer despite the fact I didn’t have any kind of direct income. The net result is that, thanks to Uncle Bill's advice, I had grown my income from VP Tanks into a very nice wad of cash, and highly liquid to boot. If I wasn't too insane with what I did I wouldn't have to work much over the years.
While I hadn't gone crazy with investing in the real estate market, my house had appreciated by a good 40% since I had bought it in 1979 and the house Jack was living in (and making the monthly mortgage on) had also appreciated nicely.
All in all, I was doing quite nicely. And so were several of my friends. Early on, Rick and I turned Mike Garret onto Fidelity Magellan and a couple of years later Jack took the hint as well. Some of our other friends fancied themselves to know more about investments than a couple of high school graduates but it did seem like every year someone could decide to listen. I didn't see myself as a guru of any kind but I did like the approach that Peter Lynch, the manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund took, invest in what you know.
Author’s note: In 1979 I worked full time at Western Tank Company of Odessa and was a part time student at the University of Texas - Permian Basin. Between work and school I had little spare time and as a result managed to not spend a good chunk of my take home pay. I wanted to make some quick money and was interested in speculating in what were effectively penny stocks in the oil/gas industry. I met with a investment manager who had an office in the First National Bank of Odessa building downtown. The investment manager tried to discourage me from the risky venture and recommended investing in Fidelity Magellan. I didn’t listen, invested in the penny stocks and lost $500 in a few months. That doesn’t sound like much today but in the late 1970’s that was more than I wanted to lose and not have a good time losing it. Sheesh… wish I had invested in Fidelity Magellan then.
Next week, in Episode 33 of The Hollow Men, Drew gets a phone call from west Texas that changes his world.