by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

In the last years of his life, my grandfather and I would sit on the back porch of his Pomona home and shoot the breeze. The conversations were usually about trivial daily stuff, but as the years went on they veered into increasingly deeper waters.

On the porch one crisp fall late afternoon when he was 91, I noticed he was uncharacteristically glum. After sitting in silence for a while, slumped over with his head in his hands, he looked up.

“Everyone I’ve ever known is dead,” he said.

I tried to cheer him up. Most of your grandkids are still here, I said, two of your three daughters too. Lots of folks love you. He smiled, but it was pained. And though I hadn’t ever considered it, I understood: his contemporaries were all gone, his siblings, his wife, his pals.

He died in 2010 at 96, and since then I’ve thought about that day often, imagining living that long and being left with only memories of one’s contemporaries.

I’ve been very lucky to have had a great many friends. Some I made in kindergarten are still with me. And though our social lives usually contract as we age, as mine surely has, I’m grateful that I’ve managed to hold on to some of those time-tested close friendships.

My best friend Christine and I met while working at Green Street Restaurant in Pasadena in our early 20s. She was a manager, and I was a “server.” That’s in quotes because in order to get the job, I lied on my application and said I had food serving experience. Minutes into my first day and sweating profusely, Christy watched as I dropped a full tray of wine glasses, producing a noisy clamor of shattered glass followed by that classic split second of silence in the packed restaurant. The jig was up: she knew I’d never done this job before. Still, she didn’t rat me out. I stayed on and eventually learned to do the job well. And by 1992, when I left Green Street for my first full-time journalism job in Lake Tahoe, she and I were inseparable.

When you’re young and work in a restaurant, your co-workers become family. There’s something about the physically demanding, high stress environment that brings people together. I did not serve in the military, but I imagine it’s a low-stakes cousin to that kind of bond. Being young and working alongside a tight-knit crew of peers in a restaurant also means you’re in the midst of the distinctively dramatic drama of youth. We had co-workers who were not so secretly in love with one another, others who were rivals, some were destined for greatness, others tragic ends. Most all of us hung out after work for our one designated “shift drink,” which, depending on who was in charge, sometimes exceeded that allotment. We all worked in a literal hothouse, physically and emotionally, and the relationships were intense.

I’ve had lots of jobs since my 1988-‘92 run at Green Street, but none left their mark on my life like that one. It directly resulted in my second marriage and later, three of my four children. I met friends I love to this day there, lifelong pals who remain in my life. I accumulated a storehouse of stories and memories that are among my most cherished. It was one of the peak periods of my life. It was a job that was much more than a job. Green Street formed me as much as anything outside my family and DNA. It’s at the top rung of the “nurture” side of my character.

On Monday, Christy and I returned to Green Street for the first time in decades. The occasion was our annual birthday dinner (hers is November 6, mine November 14). We laughed a lot about the shenanigans we got up to back then, told stories, and pulled names out of the air we hadn’t heard in decades.

All this was rolling through my brain as she and I exchanged gifts and checked in on each other and our families. It was a beautiful night. After a couple hours, a peek into the remarkably unchanged kitchen, and a few hundred laughs, we headed home.

I drove east on the 210 Freeway thinking about gratitude — for my life, my family, my work, my friends. I thought about the people I’ve loved who are gone, and after my grandfather’s words returned, I meditated a bit on longevity.

I turned 61 Thursday, and have now outlived my father by a year. Mom was gone at 74. I guess that’s my next goal. I’ve still got a few decades to go to catch grandpa.

When I was a kid I thought I wanted to live to be 100, but I’m no longer sure I want to be that old. Maybe the loneliness of outliving one’s contemporaries is too much to bear. It sure seemed that way for my grandfather, whose ebullience never really returned after that day on the porch.

In the unlikely event that I dodge the numerous landmines in my lifeline (thanks, Rhett Miller), maybe the best approach is to stop wondering how much time is left and just have fun, love hard, work hard, forgive often, and be of service. If I somehow get to very old age still ticking off those boxes, then count me in.