If I live my life according to my own script there are no surprises.
Theresa Peluso
If there was anyone less likely to become my mentor, it was Smilin’ Jack. He was a janitor who had left decades of drunken turmoil in his wake. Yet, by the time we met, Smilin’ Jack had transformed his life and radiated with the joy of living.
Raised in the mountains of North Carolina, there was little evidence that anything but a difficult future lay in Jack’s path. His formal education ended in the third grade. His father and most of his relatives worked in the local sawmill and it was assumed that he would do the same. The only other option was working with the moon-shiners. By the time he was a young teen, Jack had discovered the easy money of running corn liquor. Unfortunately, he also developed a taste for that liquid and became his own best customer. One fall evening, in a car filled with corn squeezings, unable to escape the pursuing revenuers, he was arrested. Sentenced to prison, he spent several years shackled at the ankles, working on a chain gang. Not surprisingly, the days and months of humiliation served only to increase his anger and bitterness at the world.
On his release, determined to escape the boredom of his hometown, he joined the merchant marines. Working aboard cargo ships, he traveled the world. Yet, lost in a haze of whiskey, each port was much the same as the one he’d just left - barrooms and trouble. Eventually the alcohol abuse took its toll and, no longer fit to work, he returned to the familiar mountains of North Carolina. He worked when and where he could, but only long enough to buy another jug of the clear liquid that controlled his life.
A travelling circus hired him as a maintenance mechanic and thus began a drunken tour of small-town America. Weeks, months and years passed in a blur and increasingly he awoke in jail cells with cuts and bruises that he couldn’t explain. Eventually fired from the circus, he found himself in an unfamiliar small town in Pennsylvania. Odd jobs kept him in liquor for a time but as his health deteriorated, he became incapable of even the simplest labor.
In the last, deadly stages of alcoholism he collected welfare and had whiskey delivered to his shabby rented room. One evening Jack was found unconscious in an alcohol-induced coma, and rushed to the emergency room.
While in the hospital, doctors convinced him to seek treatment. Having nowhere else to turn he accepted. That became the turning point in his life. By the time I met Jack, it had been several years since he had “taken any liquor.”
I had screwed up a good career in New York City. In the process, I’d alienated everyone I knew. Overwhelmed by self-pity and depression, for several years I hid in the bottom of a gin bottle, afraid to live but even more terrified to die. For reasons I still don’t understand, Providence stepped in and, after receiving much needed help, I started the difficult task of putting my life back together. I moved to a small town to start over. And more than a year later, my career prospects were improving steadily. But emotionally, I was not doing well. Then I met Jack.
I had been staring at a lobby office directory for several minutes when a little round man in blue work clothes waddled toward me. Grinning at my confusion, he pointed me in the right direction.
I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when, in a friendly Southern drawl, he called after me, “and by the way, son, I can’t recall when I’ve last seen a feller look as down in the mouth as you.”
Surprised at this personal observation, I turned towards him. With an almost sad, yet sincere expression, this stranger looked me in the eye and said softly, “Son, if nobody’s told you they loved you today... I do.” With keys jingling, he turned and disappeared through a door into the stairwell.
This warm, smiling janitor touched my heart and I would find excuses to visit “his” office building. Sitting in his cluttered basement office we made small talk. Gradually I came to recognize the priceless experience and wisdom he was imparting to me. When we walked along Main Street, passing cars honked greetings and shop owners stepped out to say hello. I marveled at the magical effect this once hopeless man had on people. “Every day is a blessing,” he would tell me. “I should have been dead a long time ago, but for some reason the good Lord seen fit to give me a second chance and I am to use it to help folks.”
His philosophy for living was simple: “Live a day at a time and do the best you can. Ask the good Lord to look after you when you wake up; and thank him before you go to sleep.” I saw him lend money to people, knowing he would probably not be repaid. If someone admired something he owned, more than likely, he would make them a gift of it.
My career came together and l was again working on Madison Avenue. With Jack’s support and friendship, my personal life turned around. I met and fell in love with a remarkable woman and, a year after we met, this beautiful lady agreed to become my wife.
On a breezy, summer afternoon I stood at the altar of a church wearing an ill-fitting tux and a comfortable grin. Accompanied by organ music, the love of my life, resplendent in her lace wedding gown, slowly made her way down the center aisle.
The priest posed the question, “Who gives this woman away?” For a fleeting moment, the altar glowed as if enveloped by a mist of pastels, and the clean, fresh scent of approaching rain drifted through the church. As I took my bride’s hand, we looked into the misty blue eyes of the one whose love and guidance had made this day possible.
And my best friend, Jack, smiled at us and responded proudly, “I do.”
George Roth