Road to Ripley
My cousin Molly lives in suburban Cleveland and has a husband, three kids and cancer. Her parents, my aunt Mary Jane and uncle Phil, live nearby; I stopped for a visit. Phil taught geology at Case Western Reserve and brings real knowledge and understanding to the climate change conversation. Despite complete agreement on the subject, we spent two hours yelling at each other; climate change is real and humans are stupid and fucked. Yelling about climate change is easier than yelling about cancer.
Highway 2, two lanes, curvaceous and beautiful, crosses the Ohio river and runs east from Gallipolis into West Virginia. Russ had taken a break from trimming Susie’s hedges and was sitting on a lawn chair in the shade when I rode by. I turned the motorcycle around on that skinny road and turned around again at the hedge, “Is this the road to Ripley?” I asked him. I knew the answer, I’ve got GPS on the bike.
After a few minutes, he invited me into his screen porch where we drank sweet tea and he smoked a cigar. He’s 74, married to Susie for fifty-six years, they got married in 1968 just after her father died. She was sixteen. It was their anniversary.
That same year, Russ was drafted. He went to basic and AIT at Fort Campbell where he trained as a 13 Bravo, Field Artillery. When he was done training, he went to Viet Nam. Russ has PTSD, diabetes, three stents in his heart and needs hearing aids.
I joined the Army in 1974, trained at Fort Knox and went to Germany instead of Viet Nam. It was still Russ’s Army of blood, Jesus, alcohol and drugs. My First Sergeant, Sergeant Allen, had a baseball-size purple bulge at the base of his skull that oozed shards of bloody shrapnel in the shower. Our Troop CO, Captain Tenney, tried to make me a Mormon, I guess Joseph Smith got him through his stint. Our unit Sergeant Major bought a bottle of vodka from the Class VI store every night and I mean every night. He was a vicious son-of-a-bitch come morning. The lower ranks depended on drugs to salve the wounds, speed, hash, LSD, heroin, whatever could be had. The VA considers Russ 100% disabled.
I stayed at McCoy’s Inn in Ripley last night. Maria’s the night front desk manager. As I was going to dinner, she told me she was hungry and I bought her tacos and we had a conversation. She runs a toiletries pantry for homeless people out of her house. She says homelessness is rampant in Ripley but they’re invisible, the police have no tolerance. She votes Democrat. So does the waitress on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan who is in recovery and in a bitter custody fight with a step-grandmother for her four kids. Her ex and the grandfather are both in jail. The young waitress at the Italian restaurant in Gallipolis looked at the booths on either side of me before admitting that her politics are not the politics of southern Ohio.