His birthday was on the front of my mind after I had recovered enough from my latest head cold. I also called the number I had on file in my cell phone, no luck. Some other gentleman in TN answered and said he had owned the number for a while. I guess I entered it incorrectly or the number I knew was pretty old.
I hope Lee (aka Doc) had an eventful and pleasant birthday. Around this time in 1996, he was celebrating it during his first of three years in Japan. Since his return to the States in 1999, he has been a resident of Knoxville, TN. He grew up around the area and even attended the big school there, the University of Tennessee which is also known at UT and has similar colors but they’re the Volunteers, or Vols for short.
I keep trying to convince him to move back to Austin like he did for me 13 years ago. Shortly after my friends Paul and Helen were married, we all reunited to celebrate Helen’s birthday in Milwaukee. It was a great time yet I got rather depressed while driving home. I missed these friends, I missed the conveniences of Milwaukee (believe me Bloomington-Normal, IL is an armpit of a “city.”), and so on. Thus a plan to return to Milwaukee was devised during the drive back in Mid-October. I was already living at Grandma’s house due to my own incompetence on housing; my roommate Greg decided to share a house with two rather unreliable friends and he didn’t care to tell me. All I would have to do is cut down my other expenses, put aside the money for a couple of months, quit DG and haul what little I had to Milwaukee, get something to pay the immediate bills until I landed a better gig. Now it dovetails into Lee’s birthday! He had moved to Austin after a year in Beaumont to pursue his personal dream of attending film school. It had been rough going during his first few months but I knew he was working for a private dorm near UT (Texas) and taking classes at ACC until he could be admitted to UT’s film program. I called him on or around his birthday to say hello, see how he was doing, what was new in Austin, etc. Then the conversation came around to my plan for Milwaukee. Now Lee’s two years in Milwaukee with Marquette weren’t a good time for him (something he told me later), thus, he had was prejudiced against the place. Lee had tried to entice me to Austin back in 1992 while GDW was hitting the skids and with great hindsight, I should’ve taken it after seeing how badly my world imploded months later! He tried to lure me again because the current Macintosh helper his boss hired didn’t know jack. In Central Illinois, late October to early November is cold, dark and has many days with icy rain. In Central Texas, late October to early November is sunnier than Illinois, has a few rainy days but overall the weather is gorgeous after the May-September heat wave is over. I was now interested and when he told me Austin wasn’t the same place my mother described in 1983 (a sleepy college-government town), my resume was in the mail the next morning. Then the coworkers who I despised at DG were in dick overdrive mode for practically the next few days which prompted me to call Lee and say, when you get my resume, tell your boss I can start immediately.
The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. Lee’s friendship and generosity led to bigger and better things which I will never be able to pay him back for, namely because he won’t let me. He probably knows the only way I can is by helping him and his wife move to Austin. Oddly, Lee has expressed little interest in returning. He is a much better son to his parents (last time I checked, only his mother is alive now) than I ever could be. A major reason for his resettlement in the Knoxville area was to help his parents through their retirement and battles with cancer. Lee’s generous personality extends much farther than mine ever could with his family. Don’t fret for him though. He and Masami are doing pretty well. He currently works for the university and is building a house in the countryside, a personal goal he always shared with me during our Austin days.
So if you know him yourself, send him an e-mail if you didn’t. If you want to wish him well, especially for him being my initial Austin benefactor, post something here and I’ll make sure he gets them…once he answers my latest e-mail due to the phone number being a dead end.