The Regulars

While driving to work, riding my bike or just walking the dogs, I have always seemed to come across folks I think of as "the regulars", people I encounter on a fairly steady basis while undertaking one of my usual activities.  My regulars are not people I know, only folks that have become a familiar part my landscape  and play an active role in my imagination.  The regulars give me something to look forward to and something out of the ordinary to ponder. Today, I wanted to share some of my Tucson regulars with you.

We were driving from our home through long stretches of desert road that, five years ago, contained little traffic.  Out of the blue, on a blistery hot day I saw a woman walking down the side of the road.  She carried a parasol, wore a large straw hat that obscured her face, was wearing a long skirt, worn knee-high leather boots and a rabbit-skin cape, which draped her back.   She looked like an apparition-the kind of figure you see in Western movies walking resignedly alongside the wagon train. "Hot dog," I thought to my self, "the Old West is really still alive out here".

Coming home from our errand, but still in the city limits, we saw Delta Dawn again.  She had walked about ten miles in the few hours we saw her.  Several days later, we were with friends on another stretch of the same road and there she was again.  Our friend said "Oh, there goes Delta Dawn."   Intrigued, I asked how she knew her.  She replied that she didn't know her at all, but had knicknamed her because of the song "Delta Dawn, what's that flower you've got on, is it a faded rose from days gone by......"

Five years later, I still see Delta Dawn.  I estimate that she easily walks twenty-four miles, round trip, most days.  Is she living in the past, mourning a lost lover like Miss Haversham in Dicken's Great Expectations or does she have an allergy to the sun, doesn't own a car and is too proud to ask for a ride?  I don't want to know the answer; I'd rather have my fantasies.

Then, there is the very colorful older gentleman who regularly walks along my route to work. He wears a big red bow tie, sport coat, bermuda shorts and dark dress shoes with socks.  (A few weeks ago, it was cool and rainy and he had on red and white striped tights under those bermudas!)  My fancy leads me to think he is a brilliant, retired professor who walks to take his daily regimen and to escape from his wife, who nags on and on since he is now home all day.

My third regular is one of the dirtiest, shabbiest people I have seen in my life.  He is a young man, probably in his early thirties.  His hair is matted, his skin is caked gray with dirt, his pants are an indescribable collection of stains and his jacket is torn and shredded.  He carries his belongings in about ten plastic bags, which he arrays in a circle when he sits on the steps outside of a bagel bakery, which is where I usually see him.  I have never seen him ask for a handout.

The other night I stopped at a Walgreens near his usual haunt, and he stepped in line behind me.   Unfortunately, his odor was indescribable.  He bought one bottle of 7-Up and about twenty-five small tea lights.  I realized he probably sleeps in dark alleys or other scary places and the tea lights are his version of sitting by a campfire.  

Then, there are the times when you quit seeing the regulars and you wonder what happened to them.  

For thirteen years, I rode my bicycle around Cherry Creek Reservoir in the Denver area and up until the last three or four years, I would see the same couple drive their older model car up to the parking area which bordered the lake, take their miniature chocolate brown poodle out of the car and go for a long, long walk.  We never spoke, but always waved to one another.  I thought of the man as "The Captain" because he wore a sea captain's hat every single day.  

Then, one day and the next day and the day after that, the Captain, his wife and the chocolate poodle were gone.  I still think of them to this day.

When they quit appearing, I missed them and wondered whether their dog had died or something had befallen one of them.  My landscape shrunk a lot the day they failed to return.