The transition to family life was a tough one for me. I had barely been responsible for myself when my son was born and my wife had to leave her job to be a full-time mom. I found myself very suddenly responsible for the health and well-being of two people. I had just quit the band and found a “real” job months before and with that came a new found depression, one I had not yet experienced, as I watched my hopes and childhood dreams wither under the pressure of raising a family and holding down a steady job.
The first few months went ok and we had a little nest egg from the last few paychecks of my wife’s job. We had a very small one-bedroom apartment, a three-floor walkup in Cornhill, a red brick district near the Genesee River in Rochester NY. One day something odd started happening with the neighbor downstairs, a tall, gaunt man with glasses named Mark. He started yelling “Cut it out!” at the top of his lungs, over and over again. Sometimes it would last for hours and a strange smell of burning wires and poop accompanied it emerging from under his door like a cat burglar, creeping up the stairs into our little apartment.
He had fallen off the wagon and while I genuinely felt for the guy after he came around asking for some butter, looking confused, sweaty, and malnourished, it was certainly no place to raise a family. So, we packed up and moved into a half house in the Culver-Merchants neighborhood when my son was just 4 months old. The move was hot and sweaty, a sticky late summer heat clung to everything, we were tired from the newborn, tired from life, and now completely broke. A few weeks after the move, most of our stuff still in disarray, lost among the boxes strewn across the floor, I started my second job.
I worked during the day surveying food service areas of a local grocery store chain and then spent the evenings cooking at a local Italian restaurant owned by indolent Greek man. He didn’t care for me much but I lived up the street and had experience. He also agreed to pay me cash under the table. Somedays I left at 5am for my first job, just to pull into the restaurant parking lot by 4pm, change in my car, and work until 10pm. Sometimes those days were back-to-back, barely getting enough sleep without a newborn waking me up and I went days without seeing my family, even though we all slept in the same room.
Medical bills, credit cards, increased rent, lights, heat, it all went up and up and it was all catching up to us at the same time. We had to cut back on spending and one of things that was easiest was groceries. Rice and beans along with eggs and coffee was the limit and we had our grocery bill slimmed down to almost nothing. We weren’t going to starve, but there were times, before I got paid again, where we were down to the bare minimum. I remember once taking a picture of the refrigerator to remember just how empty it was and swore I’d make things better one day.
Enter Captain Jim. A small white haired Greek man with missing teeth, a cigarette pinched between his lips, armed with a raspy voice that spoke broken English. He owned a fish market near the restaurant, was friends with the owner and would bring over the sides of salmon and bags of shrimp for service on his way home. He’d come in and talk about this or that and tell a joke or quip and then leave. It was almost every day. After a few weeks he asked me a few questions about my life and I told him.
The next time I saw him and every time after, he would bring me a Styrofoam container of salmon or other pieces of fish that were cut during processing. He wouldn’t say much about it other than “take this home to your wife” and I would store it in the low boy during service and then take it home. I tried only once to pay for it but he said that’s not why he brought it.
After I quit the restaurant job, I never saw Captain Jim again. I never gave a proper thank you or told him how much it meant to me and my family that he did that. I don’t know that much about him other than he owned some property in Greece still, made olive oil from the trees on that property, and hated the flies that would come into his shop and land on his precious fish.
The people that come into your life just when you need always amaze me. I wonder how many of those people I didn’t deserve or how many of them were directed by a higher power, the ghost of some long lost relative.
I think about Captain Jim a lot. I think about his funny Mario Andretti joke or the way he said the “f” word with his Greek accent when something annoyed him to the point of swearing, the little way he stumbled over that word, as if it got caught on his lips, too much vinegar, too much salt. I hope The Captain gets to read this, and if he does, I’d like to go on record and say, Thanks, Cap.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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