Old men

 I'm gonna love you forever. Forever and ever, Amen.
As long as old men sit and talk about the weather,
As long as old women sit and talk about old men...

--Randy Travis

Coming back from the gym to make dinner --avocados stuffed with shrimp/crab salad, grilled cheese on English muffins--- I saw my old landlord making his way into the garage of our fourplex with a box of tools. He is in his eighties, a bit slow with two strokes behind him, a wiry old Italian guy whose son has been the actual landlord for me in my 18 years here. But Joe still comes by to make sure things are ok and that "the kid" is doing things right.

I like chatting with him. He's got that combo of raw common sense, lots of useful skills, easy good manners and a ready laugh. He brought a big pincers to fix a broken branch on the lemon tree, saying that the ragged edge looked ugly, and complained about how messy the backyard had become. We talked about hoarding, about his wife's relentless project (63 years in the making) to get him new clothes, about the right way to prune a tree, about getting old, about laughing.

Guys like him make the world work.