It was a warm, summers evening; it was kind of late for a kid like me, and a worn old man like Joe Erin. Yes, a good guess would be that he was an Irishman...Old Joe kind of liked his whiskey, rambled around in his younger day, had a proud left hook when needed, and liked the late edition of the N.Y. Daily News. (had to check the results of the ponies at Roosevelt Field)
Most nights, Joe would take his exercise before heading upstairs, by walking two blocks to the candy store. They called the paper the 'Night Owl' back in those days. He'd head home with a folded paper under an arm, and a fresh pack of 'Lucky Strike' tucked squarely in his shirt pocket.
That night, the neighbor ladies had already taken themselves in, along with their folding chairs. I guess the gossip got a little boring, and for some reason all of my friends had gone home too. So it was just me and old man Joe left, standing on the stoop...His eyes shone different suddenly; like they were seeing things in the distance that I couldn't.
With a melancholy tone of remembrance, old Joe began to turn the pages of his life in a soft voice to me. He spoke of a war he once was in, as a young man; how some buddies were killed or wounded. Water came to his eyes, I could tell...he had to take a hankie from a back pocket. When he was a boy, Joe told me he went hungry some days. Something happened to the Banks which left people out of work, and unable to buy food for their families...He said, "the Banks collapsed" I thought he meant that they fell down; he chuckled then smiled an explanation to me.
Joe told me about his 'first' wife; how he did her wrong and was sorry for roaming, and staying away for days at a stretch. He lived in Ohio then...where he was raised. I learned of his farm life, milking cows in the morning then again at night before turning in. Joe talked about his mother baking fresh bread and pies...how the the smell of her kitchen was greatly missed. His father taught him to fix just about anything that was broken, and how he and his sisters swung on a tire hanging from a giant shade tree next to the house.
"They're all gone now," he said..."I miss them...haven't seen them in years." As his eyes went into the distance again, I went with them...I was seeing a place in a time long ago; like a visiting ghost from the future. I saw children running in a field, his mama in the yard hanging clothes to dry. There was a man tinkering with something on the porch...and there was a little boy, standing next to him...watching...proudly handing him a tool when asked for...
When I reappeared, Old Joe was smiling at me; I smiled in return. He mentioned, "how quiet it is tonight" and it was...Then he said, "you know...I haven't heard a cricket around here in a long time..." I replied, "yeah, me too; I wonder where they went?" Joe said he liked the sound of crickets at night; they helped him sleep.
Then suddenly...as he said that, we heard the 'chirping' of a cricket right near us in the grass...We looked at each other in amazement and almost simultaneously moved to the sound. Both bent and bewildered, our search for that cricket went empty...eventually we returned to the concrete steps. Joe asked me if I would mind going up to the store for him, before it closes...he said, "he didn't feel so good" I happily obliged.
That night...Old Joe died...I learned about it on the way home from my paper route. His family found him on the floor near the bathroom...it was his 'heart' they said, Old Joe's 'heart gave out. Yes, it gave out a melancholy, memory of love...from his heart to mine; for safe keeping...for me to somehow, somewhere, at sometime...pass along that memory of me, Old Man Joe...and the 'cricket'.
I'm about the same age now as Joe was where this story begins. Sometimes I see him, looking back at me from a mirror...Somewhere on a warm summers night, quietly thinking about 'my' past...I might suddenly hear the sound of a solitary, cricket breaking the silence. If I do, I'll expect to soon be seeing Old Joe once again, smiling at me from the stoop, saying, "welcome home...I've missed ya."
Another Original True Story by 
Image Credit: pexels (thank you)