"I got a funny story about Groucho Marx" said Crazy Henry one Sunday afternoon, trying to cheer me up.
Ever since I'd lost my job and got evicted I had lived in his spare bedroom, and I felt bad about it. I recognized his kindly attempt to sweep my gloom under his dusty rug, so I glanced up at him from the sofa, where I was stringing horse chestnuts, and tried to listen.
"See, it was during World War Two, and Groucho was in his front yard in Beverly Hills . . . "
That was all I could take.
"Beverly Hills!" I interrupted. "Don't talk to me of mansions and movie stars when there's nothing for me to do but string these damn horse chestnuts together to make a few measly bucks a day!"
"But, see, Groucho was working in his flower garden, cuz . . . "
I stood up. I had made up my mind.
"I'm going home" I told Crazy Henry.
"You don't got a home; you got kicked out" he began, but I cut him off.
"I mean back to my roots in Minnesota. Our roots, really, since you grew up there too."
"Oh. What are you gonna do there?"
"We have family and friends; they'll help me find a sense of myself again!" I said, melodramatically. I was immediately ashamed of my histrionics.
"Sorry" I said to Crazy Henry. "You're the best friend I can ever have. But I gotta do something -- I'm going crazy just sitting around here!"
"Well, then" said Crazy Henry, "let's go together. I might as well visit the old gang too!"
So on Monday we left for Red Wing, with Crazy Henry generously paying all our expenses, to look at the graveyard where our grandparents and great grandparents were buried. I felt a great bond with mine -- eking out a pallid existence as street car conductors, potato boilers, and county clerks. Crazy Henry spoiled my mood by trying to finish his Groucho story:
"So it was World War Two, see, and Groucho was working in his flower garden cuz there was no help available cuz everyone was drafted, right? Then this lady . . . "
I walked away from him, rather abruptly. I guess rather rudely, too. I wanted to think about where I came from and where I was and where I could be going. My parents had moved to Duluth and been killed in a combination tsunami and avalanche during the winter. What had their lives mattered? What did my life matter?
"Let's go see the old high school up in Minneapolis" I told him.
But when we got there we didn't go in. The place had been turned into something called a 'Business Center' where entrepreneurs could rent office space and conference rooms. We drove by our old childhood homes, across the street from each other. They both had new siding, and AstroTurf in the front yard.
"Let's go to Little Tokyo in Dinkytown" I told him. "Maybe a good cheap meal there will give us the resolve our parents once had."
At the restaurant Crazy Henry tried to finish his Groucho story.
"So anyway, this lady walks by and sees Groucho working in his flower garden, and thinks, y'know, that he's the gardener or something, so she . . . "
Just then Wendy Ling stopped at our table to say hi. Both Crazy Henry and I had a crush on her during high school. Now she was a doctor working at the Children's Hospital at the University of Minnesota. She was really happy to see us, but we didn't ask her to join us; her language was something awful. Somehow she had acquired an English accent. And she used the F-word in every other sentence, to tell us how f-king happy she was to see us, and how f-king hard she worked at the hospital, and what the f-k was up with Trump and his f-king cabinet. When she finally left to start her shift, Crazy Henry and I couldn't talk -- we just shook our heads slowly back and forth, like two old oxen in tandem, mourning the loss of innocence and grace in the world.
We didn't stay much longer in Minnesota. We passed a health boutique that sold all sorts of organic energy drinks.
"You still got all those horse chestnuts out on the patio at my place?" he asked me.
"Sure" I said.
"I bet they'd make a good energy drink! Let's go back and work on that -- we can be partners!"
Six months later our energy drink Buckeye is on shelves everywhere in the Midwest. We sold the company to Nestle for a tidy sum. I have my own apartment again, and Crazy Henry finally finished the punchline to his Groucho story:
"She doesn't pay me but I get to sleep with her."
I think he left out part of the story.
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