The Good Stuff

One great thing about having out-of-town friends is that you get to see the tourist spots in your own city. Yesterday Plotnik and Ducknik took Dick and Marilyn to the Conservatory in Golden Gate Park, surely one of the miracles of this town, and to the Beach Chalet to see the WPA murals, then back to the Mission to drive slowly down Balmy Alley and look at more murals, finishing at La Palma for quesadillas, huaraches and flautas.

The party Saturday night was a lot of fun, but in the end, it doesn't take more than a few hours to exhaust all the old stories and then you want to move into the present. The Great Plotnik learned things about himself that only the people who knew him as a teenager could have told him. He saw everyone's natural progression from happy-go-lucky teens to adults -- these smiling 60 year olds could only have come from those silly 15 year olds.

Of course, there are unanswerable questions too, estranged children, multiple marriages, the personal detritus of a generation who lived a sheltered childhood and then exploded into a new world where every opportunity was available, every door wide open, every road of discovery clearly marked and well lighted. Most of us walked down a lot of those roads.

When The Great Plotnik was a young man, he thought that, of his friends at home, only he had been smart enough to run away and join the circus. It turns out everyone did.

And what we get, on October 28, 2006, two days after Plottie's 61st, one day before Jerri's 60th, and some 40 years or more since the five friends had been together in one place with their arms around each other's shoulders, is a photo where the flashbulb failed but Plotnik brought everyone back into the light with Photoshop. It's an apt image. Jerri still has the heart Plottie loves to look into, Ken the same lightning wit, Joel the sweetness and soul inside his Dad's intensity, Dick the grounded compassion everyone remembers from his Mom, and Plottie -- what?

Well, I suppose The Great Plotnik, like everyone else, is still that combination of his family, his early life and later experiences that have molded him and continue to do so. He is still restless and hard to please, but at least his inner darkness remains submerged under his outer merriment somewhat more than in the old days. He loves at 61 the same things he loved as a young man -- his family, his friends, his guitar -- but getting older means things get richer. Now he knows about other pleasures -- like Buddy, Jerri's cat.