Freddogg Off The Chain

I was rolling down my driveway last Monday night as the golden hour of photo soft light was just beginning to make everyone look better. A pair of 10 year old girls’ eating apples shouted for me to stop.
‘Mr. Fredman, where are you going and when will you be back?”
“I’m going to the Lewes Yacht Club down by the bay because I am part of a joke.”
“What joke” one asked, while the other looking like Huck Finn’s sister, spun a core through her teeth, her wet face looking so Rockwellian?
“A man walks into a bar joke.”
“Oh,” they said. “Because we want to sit over here” and they pointed to a place on my front lawn where you can see through the trees to the open sky.
“Go ahead and sit there,”I said. “You can sit there anytime you want.”
“Yea, but we want you to sit here with us and watch the sun set. It is so pretty.”
“O.k., maybe I’ll get back real fast,” I said, thinking I haven’t sat in funky deep woods lawn scrub for a long time and it wouldn’t be a pretty site, especially my getting up. Ever notice in movies with Indians the revered chief is always sitting near the fire but they never show him getting up groaning as his sway back palomino hides behind a wigwam?
I drove to town knowing I was stupid and missing out on an invitation that was so honest and special and I don’t know why these neighbor kids love me I think because I don’t change who I am when I talk to them and I listen to them and they love to say "Mr Fredman."
But I’m at the bar drinking Amstel Light-how yuppy gay-surveying the room to see if there’s anyone I would like to talk to beyond 30 seconds worth when a former professor of mine-he was my masters advisor and his expertise is Latin American Studies and fishing for flounder= sits down next to me. His wife is on the bad thief left side.
We commence a conversation which someone off his shoulder interrupts and then someone to my right intercepts me to tell me how much they enjoy reading my column and I tell him my wife actually writes it and I look out on an upper deck and people with million dollar homes have come to the freaking Yacht Club to watch the sun set into the Broadkill River.
I just kept thinking that my first deal was the best and I’ll never get it back.
Finally, Professor John and I have a clear site line to resume a conversation.
“Before we resume talking I’d just like to say I’ve had an awful lot to drink since last time we spoke,”John said, and I said, ”You are the bar joke of my final destination. By the way,is that wine pink on has the sun set inside your chardonnay?”

Chief Freddogg