Our Town – June 19, 2017

Sometimes, the Soupster discovers, the last comes out first.

Sometimes you pity someone and that is the start of a relationship that turns out to have no cause for pity. That’s what the Soupster thought as he considered the story of Roland Greevy, who showed up at the coffee shop on his bicycle and without a helmet. His bike looked held together with fishing wire and candle wax. His border collie, Scruffy, aptly named.

The Greevys were well-known in Our Town. Old Man Greevy had been memorable for making real estate investments that always paid off, and for his generosity with his windfalls. Two of his three sons left Our Town and soared – Otto Greevy to the federal judiciary and Eugene Greevy to NASA.

In high school, Otto had been big in Student Council, well-respected for keeping his cool rationality while his classmates panicked. Beloved “Big Gene” was a star athlete, the commander of Our Town youths who occasionally left the island to vanquish friend and foe in battles of baseball and track.

Roland, by contrast, had been such a frequent visitor to the principal’s office that he felt comfortable there, almost a second home. The principal, a stern fellow but an understanding one, had experience with sons. He gave Roland tasks to do and Roland sometimes actually felt useful.

Old Man Greevy had no time for middle-child Roland. Greevy gave his full attention to the charismatic Otto and the heroic Eugene. When his two “good sons” continued their success streak in college, Greevy felt more relevant in their lives than when they were younger. His two freshly-minted adults often sought his counsel about navigating their new world.

Roland didn’t go to college, living at home until the Old Man got too critical of him, then moved to Seattle and wasted his potential there. Roland would come home when he needed money or medicine or rest, and hear his father tell tales of his spectacular siblings.

Over the years, Otto and Eugene did better and better, became busier and busier. They had less and less time for Our Town and Old Greevy. They sought his consultation less and less. Finally, not at all. But Roland still came home regularly to borrow money or obtain medicine or to rest.

As the Old Man got on in years, Roland noticed a change in his father.  A sadness in his creaky movements. Roland still scored nuggets of his father’s savings, but more and more it was his father who needed the medicine and the rest. And the painting of the fence, and the filling out of the form, and company for the occasional grilled king at Old Greevy’s favorite bistro.

At the funeral, it was the Old Man’s friends who told Roland what a comfort he had been to his father and how often his father had spoken of his gratefulness for Roland’s help. Roland lavished special attention on his two brothers, who seemed uncomfortable and unmoored, not having been home for so long.

Otto took care of the legal matters and Eugene wrote the obituary. Roland was supposed to take care of selling the house. But when he calculated the energy it would take to dispose of his father’s 50-year accumulation of stuff, he wisely decided to keep everything the same and move in himself. Otto and Eugene happily signed off on their claims.

And from that house, Roland had pedaled to the coffee shop.

“Fine day, don’t you think?” the Soupster asked.

“I like it,” Roland answered.