…sat on the park bench like bookends”, sang Paul Simons. Bookends, my ass. Many of us are Type A, and we don’t sit. We're out jogging, taking care of our grandchildren, cutting the lawn, going to book clubs, writing letters to encourage people to vote, driving for Meals on Wheels, or making the perfect frozen Margaritas. And we “old folks” have friends who are “old folks”, too, and until this damned pandemic struck you would as likely find all of us in Italy, Russia, China, or the Galapagos, snorkeling with dolphins. Here are six old folks who would be in some other country right now if they thought that traveling wouldn’t make us all candidates for ventilators.
Two of Jadyne’s college friends married before we did. We’ve all become good friends, both husbands and wives. The six of us have known each other for four or five decades. We have dinner together at least three times a year, going between Oakland, San Francisco, and Kensington.
Last night Mary and John hosted us at their home in Oakland. It looks “lived in”, but not the way that most houses look “lived in,” as twenty-nine years ago they told their kids, “There’s threat of fire. We need to evacuate. Take your homework.” And their house was one of 2,843 that was burned to the ground. They lost everything. Everything,
Mary Brutacao-Kemp and John Kemp
Both Kemps are retired attorneys. Mary’s practice was family law; John’s was taxes. They have two daughters and a son. Once upon a time they looked like this:
From an undated color slide. Our youngest is forty-two, so Jadyne’s pregnancy dates this closer to five decades ago.
John and Mary’s oldest, Jessica, is close in age to Jennifer. Here’s a photograph of Jessica and Jennifer, one of my favorites.
Jennifer is on the left, Jessica on the right. Rawlins, Wyoming and Dillon, Montana look on, wishing to be part of the hijinks.
As far as we know money has never been an issue with the Kemps. In 1984 we came to visit them for a weekend, and I suggested that we go to a Toyota dealer to look at the new Toyota van, which had just been introduced. The dealer had one in stock. John asked me, “Are you going to buy this?” I said, “Not this one. I like the silver better.” John said, “Good, because I am.” When the salesman asked John to fill out his salary figures John returned the document to the salesman who replied, “Not your yearly salary, but your monthly one.” John smiled, “I know,” he replied. We’ve traveled together, shared much, drunk as much as we’ve shared, and consider each other lifetime friends.
When Teeny was killed in an avalanche in 1988 John and Mary drove to Santa Rosa that night.
And so it is with Tracy and Al.
Al and Tracy
Al was an Alameda Public Defender, and Tracy taught school. Al’s Italian ancestors lived in San Francicso, and so do Tracy and Al. Their home in the Marina District of San Francisco, a couple of blocks from the bay, is built on fill. During the Loma Prieta in 1989 it sustained, as I remember, damage in the neighborhood of $40,000. Al took off work and did the work himself. Al is good at stuff like that. I’m not. But then again, I think that Al remodeled a bedroom and bathrroom at their house for Becky, finishing it just as she was leaving for college. They still have a VW that, because it’s about two hundred years old, is worth five or six times more than what they paid for it.
Tracy and Al are sharing an experience with us that none of us signed up for—contentious divorce in the marriage of our first born children. Not going there. In this photograph Al is holding their second child, Mark.
Mark and Al. Mark is the one without the beard.
Jadyne
There are countless anecdotes from our time together, most of which we can look back on with amusement, anecdotes that we remember, experiences that we share. Marlene Dietrich once said, “It’s the friends you can call at 4 am that matter.” It’s a lovely sentiment, but after last night’s six or seven bottles of wine I don’t think that John would have answered.