Robbie

I don't have a lot of close friends. A few from high school and college, and some from different jobs. Most of those involve communication on the internet and are rarely face-to-face. Moving to the South side of the city was a form of unintended isolation from a lot of the people I knew when I lived north. The railroad was another form of social isolation due to the fact I spent the bulk of my life at work. Since retirement I've managed to meet people through a local arts group, but still feel like an outsider. I'm starting to feel like a bit of an old fuddy duddy. My best social interactions are with people who, like me, worked for the railroad. Imagine that.

Robbie is one of those long time friends who has drifted in and out of my life. We met in college and roomed together for a short time. I had been wandering from various shared off campus living arrangements on the northside when my wife (then girlfriend) and I landed in an apartment with Robby and Chuck. Their apartment on Brompton faced the Salvation Army headquarters which provided us with morning entertainment via the band that played outdoors almost every day. Robby knew about my food allergies and would constantly tease me by threatening to cook things with the offending foods and watch me turn colors. Chuck would walk around with only a bathrobe and randomly expose himself at breakfast. Never a dull moment.

Mary and I moved into an apartment that didn't include any other entertaining clowns, but not too far from Robby. One memorable evening I asked Robby to help me move a cable spool up the back steps to our third floor apartment. Now this should have been a relatively simple task for two able bodied young men, but Robby just flopped around and constantly fell down. He essentially became a back stop to keep the spool from rolling back down the stairs. When we had agonizingly accomplished the mission I asked him what the fuck his problem was. It seems he had taken muscle relaxers before he came over. I sent him home and the next day he called me to say he was sore and covered in bruises and wanted to know what had happened.

Robbie got a job at the railroad, and I would drive him on occasion when he had car problems. When I lost my film animation job Robby was the one who suggested I apply to the railroad. I was hired, so I can thank and curse Robby for altering the course of my life. We would eventually live within a block of each other and I hung out a lot with him and his girlfriend Sarah. She introduced me to a short lived romantic flame, Holly from Hegewisch, a tough chick southsider who looked at romance like it was leprosy. Sarah would later inexplicably marry Chuck and eventually moved to California. Robby went on to get married as well and our relationship sort of dissipated.

So, many years later I find out that Robby and the charming Sarah live a few blocks from our southside home. Sarah divorced Chuck, I think she married someone else and divorced him, then moved back to Chicago to work at a southside hospital. Robby was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce and had moved in with Sarah in her tiny one bedroom apartment. We had come full circle. Instead of driving Robby to work I drove him to medical appointments. The railroad had pretty much left him crippled and neither of them owned a car. I'd stop by on occasion to chat about old times and old friends. They were amazingly still in contact with a lot of people we knew in college. I helped Robby pack up the belongings at his old house as the marathon divorce approached the finish line. I picked up their mail when they went out of town, and answered emergency calls when Robby would fall and get injured.

When the divorce came through they decided to fulfill a dream and move to Arizona. I am not sure how they ever managed to pull it off because they were still packing when the movers showed up. Of course the movers forgot a box and I had to drive out to some remote suburb near the edge of the known universe to drop it off. We still keep in touch by phone when Robby doesn't lose it or forget to turn it on. I still consider him one of my best friends, because through thick and thin, he's the best damn cable spool back stop I've ever known.