I zoom into the driveway one perfect summer Saturday. Windows down, Up Around The Bend cranked.
Old Mr. Weber appears on his porch, yelling, "I can hear you comin' miles away! The racket is rattlin' my bones"
I holler it's CCR.
He frowns. "Who?" A dark look for a sunny day.
"Creedence Clearwater Revival"
He shrugs.
"From way back in like 1970"
He says he voted for Nixon.
Mr. Weber lives next door in a bungalow lost in time and tall grass. He keeps the dirty windows closed and the yellowing drapes pulled. Except for my cat, no one visits.
"Mr. Weber", I say.
"What?"
"Get in."
I floor it into the song. We storm out of town. At a traffic light, the police wag a finger and girls in a convertible woo-hoo at the little white-haired man in my sunglasses. Fishtailing around a corner on a dirt road, Mr. Weber shouts, "Eat my dust!"
We stop for ice cream. He roars at my air-guitar. I howl at his chocolate moustache.
He tells me about his bad heart, how long the years have been since he lost his wife.
I teach him the lyrics to CCR's song, but he makes up his own; something about his Betty and a Chev, and how there was celestial motion one night.
Helping him to his door, I promise we'll go on another road trip.
We never do. Don't see him through August and in September, a for sale sign suddenly appears out front of his house.
May there be eternal summer wherever Mr. Weber went. May he be singing his own Up Around The Bend to his Betty.
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