Harland Was Once A Drunk

Hello, my name is Harland Staples, and I’m 103-years-old. I’ve been in this assisted living home for the past couple years, because I tripped over the coffee table and broke my hip. I get around fairly well, but I still need a walker.

Do I need to lean over your recorder, or can it hear me from up here? That’s good. Now, why did you say you’re here? What is a centenarian? Oh, well how about that. You learn something new everyday, So, what do you want to know?

I’ve been here in Vespucci for about fifty years. This place was like the Wild West when I first got here. The week before I arrived, someone murdered the sheriff. Poor bastard, he went out on a call for domestic violence, and he knew the couple personally. When he pulled up, the husband was in the front yard with a shotgun. He thought he could talk some sense into the guy, but once he got so close, the husband raised his gun and shot him point blank in the chest.

Oh no, I’m originally from Mississippi; a tiny town named Stoneywood. It’s way out in the country. That was back in the dark ages, before there was electricity and running water out in the country. I was a grown man before we got electricity. I still remember when we got it. Every room in the house got one receptacle and a bare light bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. We were still using an outhouse, but we had electric lights.

I left Mississippi in my late twenties for California. I had a job with the telephone company out there. Life was good. I had a handle bar mustache, and a black motorcycle that would haul ass. I eventually got rid of it after I wrecked, and I went to the emergency room. Where they dug gravel out of my arms and back.

I lived in a gay neighborhood for a while. I didn’t know it was a gay neighborhood when I moved in, but it didn’t bother me. I had a group of guys, who were all gay, that I was friends with, and we would go out to the bars together. Whenever we went out, they all dressed well, smelled good, bought me drinks, and were absolutely no competition for the women. I thought it was fucking fabulous. 

I eventually moved back to Mississippi when I was thirty-five. My father had passed, and I had moved back to be near family.

I hadn’t been back home long when I met Susan. She was ten years my junior, and the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I was taken within ten minutes of first meeting her. She was so funny and smart. She was witty, quicker than anyone I’d ever met. God, I remember being terrified that first date. I had never felt like that before. It didn’t take long, and we were inseparable. 

I couldn’t believe I had finally found her. I had spent years looking for a woman to love, a woman to love me. I had decided, long before then, that love just wasn’t in the cards for me. You know, everyone can’t dance, everyone can’t sing, and everyone is not going to find love. I just chalked it up to that. There were women along the way, but I never had anything with them like what I had with Sue.

It wasn’t long at all, and we were married. We tried for a long time to have a baby, but Susan wasn’t able. She did get pregnant once, but she lost the pregnancy. Those were some dark days. I questioned whether Susan was going to make it, but she did, we did, together. 

It was shortly after our tenth anniversary when she found the lump. God, I could have laid down and cried when she told me. I did my best to keep a brave face and be reassuring. I would tell her how everything was going to be okay, and the doctors would get her fixed right up.

At the second oncologist appointment, we learned just how advanced the cancer was and all of her treatment options and all the odds. It was bleak to say the least. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, then all of the adverse reactions -nausea, vomiting, a chance of infection, the possible need for a feeding tube, radiation burns, hair loss, weight loss, neuropathy, countless medications, and countless doctor visits. That night, in bed, I held Sue while she wept, and I did my best to not let her see my tears. 

I went to every doctor’s appointment, got whatever she needed, and waited on her hand and foot. I did everything I could to keep her comfortable. If I wasn’t able to be there for her, I would pay for her mother and sister to come to town. 

Sue was resilient, stout, and stubborn, but in the end the cancer won. I had her buried in her favorite dress. I can still see her lying there. That chemo had done quite the number on her. She was so poor and frail; she looked like you could grab her arm, and it would break. We buried her on a Tuesday. Wednesday, I left Mississippi.

Naturally, I went stone ass crazy, and stayed on a drunk for a little over five years. No, I never did meet anyone else. I never looked either. Meeting someone else just never interested me. My twelve years with Susan was everything I ever needed. I was a man lost in the darkness, and she was the star that lit my path. 

Well, after I left, I ended up here in Vespucci. The first job I landed was painting houses. It was a damn good job for a drunk. My boss was a drunkard as well, and we took turns buying beer when we were heading to the job in the morning.  

I didn’t make a lot of money painting houses, but, thankfully, I found a pretty cheap place outside of town. There wasn’t any running water, but I had electricity. I felt like I was in my twenties again. There was a pump well, out front, that put out cool, clean water, and I had a large metal tub to wash my clothes and take a bath.

After years of drinking, I woke up one morning, in the front yard, puking blood. I had been having stomach pain for a while and was just ignoring it. Hoping, it would go away, but things like that never do. The pain was unbearable, and I was painting my yard in blood and what looked like coffee grounds. Once I was able to get to my feet, I hopped in the truck and drove myself to the hospital. 

I ended up being flown to Columbus, where I had emergency surgery. I had several bleeding ulcers and a couple holes in my stomach. The surgeon told me I was a very lucky man, and if they had taken me to Atlanta, instead of Columbus, I probably wouldn’t have survived the flight. He then told me, if I ever drank again, I would die.

So, I bought a twelve pack and a pint of whiskey when I got back home. I sat down at the kitchen table, took a shot of whiskey, and bent at the waist, almost falling out of my chair, when a sharp pain hit me in the gut. When the pain finally subsided, I sat back in my chair and stared at the bottles. 

For the first time, in a long time, I thought of Susan and didn’t feel sorry for myself. I was ashamed, because I knew she would be too. All I could think about was how much it would hurt her if she could see me now. The way I just let my life go without her. I could almost hear her voice in my head telling me to get myself straightened out, that I was better than this, and how much she loved me. I cried thinking about all the life I’d wasted.

I stood up from the table, and said this shit ends today. I threw all of the alcohol in the trash. I made a promise to myself, and Sue, that I would never touch another drop alcohol of alcohol. I’ve kept my promise. I cleaned myself up after that. I got a good job with Georgia Power, and built me a little cabin out in the country. I eventually retired, and spent over twenty years in my little cabin before I ended up here.

I reckon, that just about covers my life. Do you have any questions, sir? What? Legacy? No, I’m not concerned with a legacy at all. What people think of me when I’m gone means nothing to me. I’ll tell you why.

About twenty or thirty years ago, I was in an antique shop, just browsing around. I turned down one of the aisles, and looking me square in the face was a picture of an old man. It was late nineteenth, early twentieth century, and a fairly good piece -large bronze oval frame and domed glass. He was a very distinguished looking old gentleman with a beard, salt and pepper hair, and a good looking suit. 

While I was studying the old man, I realized something. That picture had probably hung in his house. Then when he died, it hung in his children’s home. Then when they died, it may have even hung in a grandchild’s home. That picture hung in someone’s home until the last person who had any kind of connection to that man died. After that, The picture was probably sold in an estate sale, and eventually ended up in that store.

There we were, just me and him staring at each other. It was a hundred years later, and no one knew who he was or anything he had done. There wasn’t even someone who thought enough of him to hang him in there home. He was just a face in an oval. 

That’s why I’m not worried about my legacy. In fifty to a hundred years, there won’t be anyone left who will remember it. All the things I just told you, they’ll just be words that simply died in the wind. It probably won’t be long before no one will ever hear those stories again. It will be like all of that living never happened.

Don’t concern yourself with your legacy, sir. Just focus on the hear and now. What you can do to help others and the knowledge you can pass along. Don’t worry about being remembered. They won’t know who you were. Take comfort in knowing you helped people, and those little things you taught them, or your good deeds, when they pay it forward, a little part of you will live on in them. 

I live my life like this: Be better today than you were yesterday, and hope you’ll be better tomorrow than you were today. That’s all you can do.

After all these years of living, I regret nothing, and could give a rats ass what they’ll say about me when I’m cold and gone.

Now, do you think all of that’ll make a good article for your paper?