The Streetlight On Jackson Drive

This one is short and sweet. No big dicks, no massive sized breasts, no latent hidden sexual desires. Just two people who happen to connect in midlife and see it through to the end.

The Streetlight On Jackson Drive

This would be the third time I was sent to Jackson Drive in the past five weeks. I wondered if this call would be the same light as before and if it had been shot out as well. I didn't really care, I billed the city the same amount whether it was a first-time call or a repeat such as this.

Jackson Dr. was on the west side of town. In 1953 our fair city had a population of 3,371 people. The city fathers envisioned growth would move to the west. With government and state grants the city began modernizing from outhouses and backyard hand pumps to a central sewer system and city water. The west side of town was mostly farmland. The city fathers began buying up that farmland, extending the city sewer and water infrastructure for what was expected to be a housing boom.

A boom that never materialized. GI's with families weren't interested in going west. The housing boom and city expansion went North and Eastward. When the dust settled the west side expansion consisted of three streets and lots of empty plots. By the time I came to be in 1969 most of the city's expansion had occurred on the opposite side of town. New businesses and manufacturing jobs helped sustain the town's population of 5,913.

My childhood days were spent roaming the still wooded areas on the west side, playing ball on any empty spot we could call a ballfield, attending school at Grayson Elementary and later Central High School. I wasn't interested in college and didn't have enough money for tech school. The military seemed my best option. I envisioned that I would serve my country and hopefully learn a trade of some sort. I spent the next 4 years in the Air Force working in the motor pool.

I was only stationed on two different bases during that time: Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, AK and Offutt AFB south of Omaha, NE. My time at Offutt was only the last 9 months of my 4-year hitch. Elmendorf had been where I learned the most. The equipment I worked on the most was diesel powered. I carried that skill home with me upon discharge. I was 23 years old and looking for a job, preferably as a diesel mechanic.

My sister was married to a guy that worked for the county. At a family gathering he told me the county shop was looking for a diesel mechanic to work on heavy equipment. Snowplows, graders, backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, and the like. Exactly what I had done the past 4 years. I was hired and spent the next 27 years in that very shop.

I met the love of my life on my 24

th

birthday. The few friends that remained from high school days insisted we go on a bar crawl to celebrate my birthday. It was about as exciting as watching paint dry. I had never been a heavy drinker and wasn't about to start that night. A beer or three, maybe, but that was it. If they wanted to get plowed and hate themselves in the morning, go for it.

We were at Dilly's Whiskey Corner when they began getting rowdy enough that I walked away and sat at a table on the other side of the room. Next to me were three younger ladies nursing some sort of fruity drink. Fifteen minutes later I watched as the three guys I had come with were escorted from the premises by two rather large burly guys. One of the young ladies looked at me, smiled and said.

"Aren't you going with your friends?"

I shook my head no. "They aren't really friends. It's guys I knew from high school that insisted we celebrate my birthday. Not my thing."

As we parted I learned her name was AnneMarie and that she was a first-grade teacher at my old stomping grounds, Grayson Elementary. I made it a point to not only get to know her better but to eventually convince her to marry me. What is it they say? Life is what happens as you make plans. Which is exactly what happened over the next 22 years.

This is the part where I'm supposed to look through rose colored glasses and tell you that life was wonderful and without conflict. And to be honest, it was for the first several years. We were both involved in summer sports with lots of friends to hang out with and functions to attend. We fished, hosted and attended others bar b q's, ate sweet corn, went to Friday Fish Fry and enjoyed life. Our plan was to settle back and begin a family in our late twenties or early thirties. We would be well established in our jobs, money in the bank, have retirement plans set in place and be ready to buy a home. It would be time to add more joy to our lives with littles playing in the yard.

It didn't take long after tossing my pants on the chair in our bedroom that AnneMarie told me with a smile on her face and her groin pushed against mine as we kissed goodbye one morning that I was going to be a daddy. The word to describe the atmosphere in our home was one of elation. We smiled, laughed, dreamed, anticipated, and made plans. Lots of plans.

Plans that crashed and burned when she miscarried at ten weeks. We cried, hugged, held one another longer than usual, told ourselves we were young and all would be well the next time. That scenario repeated itself several times over the years to come. I had plenty of seed, she had eggs. We were in our late thirties and baffled when they discovered the cause. Her autoimmune system was rejecting the fetus, not allowing it to stay attached to the uterus.

By this time we had purchased a quaint 4-bedroom home with one bath and a two-car attached garage. Neither of us were into extravagance, instead of fancy vehicles we drove three- to five-year-old good used vehicles. We had two indulgences during those years. The first was a 17' bass boat with all the goodies. The second was Christmas/New Years every year at a resort in Northern Wisconsin.

When the bad news hit, we had endured six miscarriages in ten years, we were mentally exhausted. To say that we were devastated would be an understatement. The balance moving from wedded bliss to a rocky existence moved slowly enough that neither of us saw it for what it was. The beginning of the end. I slowly crawled into a hole and didn't come out unless she needed me. We didn't ignore one another, we were simply wrapped up in our grief to the point that our lives became rote.

AnneMarie became deeply depressed and blamed herself for our failure to have children. No matter how much I comforted or told her I didn't blame her in any way, she remained in a dark place most of the time. The first two years were hell, and then suddenly she seemed to slowly come out of her deep funk. I didn't attribute it to anything in particular, I was overjoyed that maybe my AnneMarie would soon be returning.

You know the saying, hindsight is always 20/20. I admit I am guilty as charged for I saw nothing other than what I wanted to see. She hadn't changed her dressing style or done any radical makeovers concerning her appearance. She was just, well, AnneMarie. Intimacy during our darkest most depressing times was anything but frequent. At the same time, when it occurred it was mutually satisfying. Had I been more observant I would have noticed the changes in my best girl before the wheels came off the cart.

It was during our first Christmas trip in three years that she broke down sobbing in my arms after making love. Once cried out she admitted to having slept with the gym teacher at the high school. Three times. The way she explained it he had seduced her and as depressed as she had been I could see how that might take place. The affair had ended as quickly as it began, there had been no contact for over four months.

I was hurt enough that my first instinct was to cast her aside and get on with the rest of my life. However my heart intervened. We had been together and gone through too many hardships to simply divorce. I convinced myself it was a once and done sort of thing. We reaffirmed our love for one another and moved on, cautiously I might add. I remembered words I had heard years prior, "trust and verify".

I watched for weeks and didn't sense anything in the dark corners of her mind. Our marriage was back on track for all intents and purposes. Until it wasn't. It was a few years later on my 41

st

birthday that I discovered she was having an affair with the new kindergarten teacher. A young man 29 years old and determined to screw as many of the teachers as possible. Only this time it wasn't a once and done. It wasn't an enticed seduction, this time it was planned.

We separated for a short season, with me living in an above the garage apartment owned by a work associate. She stopped the affair as soon as I found out. We agreed to counseling, neither of us wanted the marriage to end, but it couldn't go on as it was. Part of our counseling brought out the fact that since she couldn't get pregnant, she seemed to think other sex partners would be okay if I didn't find out. By the time we had finished six months of counseling we were sure she would not stray again, knowing what we now knew.

My move back home lasted just over a year. We were together, we enjoyed one another's company, sex was okay, but something was missing. We loved each other, but we didn't like each other. I didn't need to discover that she was cheating again, she exposed herself in a way no one would have guessed. The guy she was screwing in a hotel at the annual Teachers Conference 200 miles away died mid coitus. Her screaming caused such an uproar that the room was entered by management only to find my petite naked wife pinned beneath 317 pounds of dead weight. Literally.

There was no coming back from this. I filed immediately, she didn't fight the petition signing right away. Wanting to be away from the stares and judgement of others she moved an hour away. She wasn't able to find work teaching and settled for a secretarial position, a job she hated. We had reached out to one another a few times but never got together.

I don't want this to sound completely one sided. Once the divorce was final, I was dipping my toes in the proverbial pussy pool that seemed to find me after I became single. The last time AnneMarie and I spoke I sensed she was in that dark low place again and determined to make sure I saw her soon. That never happened, she had taken her life, I was 46 when I became a widower. With neither of us having family near I made the decision to have her cremated and dump the ashes in the waters we so fondly fished years ago.

Her death hit me like a brick in the head. My desire to screw most of those eager to be screwed stopped almost immediately. Though AnneMarie and I were no longer together there was still a part of me where she would always live. At the age of 52 I had my 30 years in and decided to pull the plug so to speak. Between her life insurance, our investments and savings I had enough to live frugally. I decided to start receiving retirement right away.

Retirement sucked. With AnneMarie gone and no family it made sense to upgrade the home and sell it. I spent the first-year learning how to do simple electrical, plumbing and carpentry from friends and the internet. There's a video for everything if you look long enough. By the time I was 54 I had added an attached bath to the main bedroom, rewired the basement, completely gutted and remodeled the kitchen.

It was about the same time the city put out a request for bids to replace streetlights as they needed to be upgraded. The guy who had been doing it retired and no one else wanted the job. I sat in the living room nursing a beer when I said out loud, "Well hell. I can do that. Shit, it's not rocket science converting an old high pressure sodium fixture to an LED conversion. Or replacing it with an entirely new LED fixture."

After talking with the city comptroller about being able to buy the city's aged bucket truck I put in a bid on a per unit basis. And since I was the only person that bothered to send in a bid, the job was mine as soon as I produced proof of insurance and became bonded. How it works: The city maintenance shop calls me with reported light outages, I swing by their shop for materials and then go do the job. Somedays there's one or two, other days there are eight or ten. My only outlay is for fuel, insurance and maintenance on the truck. Oh, and a tool replacement from time to time.

I wasn't rolling in the dough, but I also wasn't having to draw from investments or savings. Which brings me back to the trip across town to Jackson Dr. Prior to the call I'd received 5 weeks earlier I hadn't been on Jackson Dr. for years. I liked that area. All the land the city fathers envisioned as being full of houses had been converted back to crop land leased to local farmers. All but the three streets that had homes.

Jackson Dr. was an interesting street. It was what you might call old country. On that street was the only original house in that part of town. The Jacksons had farmed it for over 60 years by the time the city got busy trying to buy property on the west side. Delbert was the one living there then with no wife or kids to follow in his footsteps. He made a wise decision and sold all but 50 acres out of the 368 he owned to the city.

I found myself reminiscing about part of my growing years the first time I turned onto Jackson for an inoperative streetlight, as the dispatcher called it. I liked that old gravel road. There weren't many houses on the mile long road. The most prominent was the original Jackson homestead almost dead center from one end to the other. A stately two-story home with a porch on three sides, in old fashioned style it was painted white with dark green shutters and trim.

The original barn stood behind it along with two smaller outbuildings. Granny Jackson, as everyone in town called her, had been living in that house since she was born. She'd kept the buildings maintained and sturdy throughout the years, renting what tillable land she owned to local farmers. A creek known as Forever Creek ran behind the barn out to the road where it passed under via a huge culvert. It was known as Forever Creek because it was fed from two artesian wells and never stopped flowing. Those wells were at the very back of the property in a small forest still owned by the Jackson family.

I smiled and took my time as I meandered down the road to the third light as noted on my work order. As a boy I'd shot my first pheasant in that field to the left, my first deer in what was called Brown's Woods, along with countless squirrels and rabbits before entering the military. Carrying a loaded 22 or 20 gauge shotgun down those old gravel roads was something thought of as normal back then. In this day and age you'd be in cuffs before having a chance to say you were hunting. As I neared the light I realized it was close to the Jackson home.

I stopped the truck, lowered the outriggers and climbed into the bucket. When I reached the light I said to myself, "What the hell happened here?" The fixture had been destroyed by a large caliber bullet. This was no kid with a new 22 for his birthday taking pot shots hoping to pierce the heavy plastic cover. No, the bullet that did this damage was at least a .308 caliber or similar.

Lowering myself to get an LED replacement fixture and grab tools, I happened to look at the house. Sitting on the front porch was a lady with a drink in hand watching me. With her being dark skinned I figured that she was one of the Jackson clan. The great grandfather had been an emancipated slave and settled the land. Through years of hard work and solid stewardship he and his family were the owners of the biggest farm in the county when he died. She nodded her head and held her drink up as a hello.

I went about my business, replaced the light and since she was no longer on the porch I simply went on my way. Two weeks later I was back for the same thing. I let the city maintenance guy know about the first incident, he said he'd tell the cops and that was the end of it. On the second call I stood in the bucket and scanned the horizon. Judging by the angle of the bullet it had to have come from somewhere to the north. The problem was, there were no buildings on that side of the road until the very end of the street where a bunch of rednecks named Brown lived.

I replaced the two-week-old LED fixture with a new one and was putting tools away when I realized someone was behind me. As I turned, I was greeted by the smiling face of the lady who sat on the porch and watched me. In her hand was an iced beverage.

"Iced tea?" She asked.

Her soft smile and lovely face were inviting. I nodded and took the tea. Following a gulp or two I lowered the glass and did an instantaneous assessment of this fine creature before me. She stood about five foot seven or eight, was solid throughout but possessed a nice figure. She looked almost like a body builder without the bulk. There was no mistaking this lady's body was solid, not big or pudgy, solid. Her skin was a lighter tone than I expected, I made the assumption she was mixed race, which was neither here nor there to me.

The summer dress she wore hugged her body enough to display her lovely figure without being too tight. I was drawn back to her smile, it was almost infectious. Extending her hand she spoke.

"Hi. I'm Cheryl Jackson. I was born in that house where I now live with Granny. She's 99 and still doing for herself. She's nearly blind and doesn't hear well, her legs give her fits, but her mind is sharp as a tack. I should hope to be that spry at her age. If I wasn't with her, they'd put her in a home. The thought makes me ill."

Her handshake was firm but not overbearing. It was one of confidence, one of knowing who and what she was.

I responded, "Hi. Luke Willis. I grew up in the area, joined the Air Force, returned, married, then widowed and now I'm semi-retired. I subcontract to the city for streetlight maintenance."

"Air Force huh? So was I. I was a loadmaster, for the last eight years or so it was exclusively C-5M's. Before that it was everything from C-130's to C-17's. I did 26 years. I was originally going to do 30 but Granny needed someone and to be honest, I was an E-8 with no likelihood of making E-9 so I decided to get out and move here. None of the other cousins or grandkids wanted to move back here."

I had three more lights to attend to. I finished my drink, thanked her and drove to the next one. Cheryl Jackson? Why did that name sound so familiar? I spent the rest of the day wondering why I couldn't place it. It was while eating supper at Dale's Diner, one of those older stainless steel looking places from days gone by, that I suddenly put it together. Cheryl was Sylvester Jackson's younger sister. He and I were in high school together and made up a part of the 400-meter relay team. His younger sister, Cheryl, was a freshman when we were seniors.

Their mother was a nurse serving with the Peace Corps in Africa, met a French doctor, married him and they had two children. Sylvester and Cheryl. The apartheid uprising in the 80's affected all of Africa. Uprisings in opposition to the colonial structure that had existed for years brought with them needless killing on both sides. Such was the situation with Cheryl and Sylvesters' parents, both massacred when the field hospital they worked out of was overrun. I remembered the story I'd heard as a young lad about two children from Africa who spoke French coming to live with the Jackson family.

It was still as clear as mud but with those memories came a better understanding of whom I had met earlier in the day. Having lost track after school I had no idea where Sylvester might be, but I knew where Cheryl was. I decided that I would go back to the farm at a later date for a chat and to reminisce. You know how that goes, the best laid plans of mice and men. I didn't return until three weeks later when there was a report of the streetlight being out again.