Second Time Around Revisited
It's four-thirty and eighteen degrees when I awaken. Today I’m leaving snow covered Hancock in the western Catskills and the frozen headwaters of the Delaware River, for sunny California for a new job. My bag packed and ready to go rests by the front door downstairs. My neighbor Stanley is driving me to the Greater Binghamton Airport for a six AM flight. It’s still dark outside and I see the yellow light shining dimly in the window of his house next door. I dump my bag in his truck and walk carefully up the gravel path. It’s a sheet of black ice. It’s no joke this black ice. One slip and there goes a hip. "Stanley!” "Yeah". He's sitting at the head of his dinning room table where he always sits sipping his coffee and smoking a cigarette. The house is warm and the wood stove glows. He's wearing a tee shirt. I'm dressed in layers – tee shirt, black roll-neck under my green wool sweater clasped at the neck, scarf and my black Calvin Kline woolen pea coat...
