Guys Hangin' Out

A few hundred yards down the county road is a house with a fencerow choked with pokeweed, wild grape, and lots of poison ivy.  In that fencerow however is enough elderberry for a gallon or two of wine.  Larry, the owner of the home, gave me permission last year to take those elderberries, and from them I made a couple of gallons of forgettable elderberry wine.  I took him some of this wine a few weeks ago, and asked for permission to pick again.  He kindly obliged, then excitedly told me about a spot, available for picking, that had many times the elderberries in his little fencerow.  He volunteered to take me there when the berries ripened.

This past week I had a free evening, and the berries were ripening, so I rang him up.  I was mainly fishing for directions; I expected that his offer to take me to the spot was just small talk.  Instead, his instructions were to pick him up in 30 minutes.  He was going with me.

Larry and his wife live in the house he built 29 years ago.  His kids are grown with families of their own, and I suspect he's nearing retirement.  I've lived a few hundred yards from Larry and his wife for the past 17 years, and for 16 of those years, I didn't really know him.  My loss.  I first started to realize this when I got a tour of his yard last year after picking the fencerow.  I thought for years that I was somehow special for growing Metasequoia glyptostroboides.  It turned out that Larry had also come to appreciate the tree and had a couple of nice specimens in his yard.  We spent an enjoyable hour touring each other's properties, reviewing the history of certain specimens, what grew well, what failed, and what was planned next.

So I should not have been surprised when Larry walked out to the car this past week, clippers in hand, with every intent of making the the most of the opportunity.  He is one of the most interesting, vital, and engaging persons I have the pleasure to know.  For the next 3 hours, we battled the weeds and the wild blackberries, me in the lead, Larry just behind on one artificial knee, to collect 13# of elderberries.  Larry charted the course of the conversation, which covered families, travel, interests outside of work, the upcoming election.  He probed, but in a genuine, sincere way.  It was a surprisingly interesting, sweaty, prickly, productive, enjoyable 3 hours.

And I told him that. His response struck me.  "Guys need to hang out more often with other guys. It's good for us to do that."

Indeed, Larry, indeed.