Travels With Uncle Nate

Branded with now scrubbed away ink, but forever carved into the Formica countertop: “Keep Portland Weird,” raced a divergence of imaginations as I deliberated the poet’s purpose. I’d never been to Portland, still, my mission there was indeed weird.

In that progression of weirdness snug inside the breast pocket of my threadbare camel-haired jacket, a second little black book--a twin to the one giving purpose to my cross country journey.

Against that, appeared a young man crowned in a paper hairnet.

“Train’s early this morning,” began the man, “Shirley will be with you in a second.”

“Sounds good to me, chief,” was the best I could muster as I watched him turn on a portable radio and then start the stove.

The day’s first spit of primordial lard emancipated from the well-worn stainless-steel grill seemed as weary as I felt. The radio covered in sedimentary layers of grease; the plastic in front of the speaker broken produced a modulation more in tuned with shortwave reception. None of that mattered. All I wanted was for Shirley to arrive. I was, after all, properly hungry having spent more than sixty-eight hours onboard two trains, all the while holding the cost for this breakfast in reserve as per Nate’s prescription.

I didn’t notice Shirley’s presence until she broke my wandering spell with, “Coffee, hon?”

“Yes, ma’am, please,” was my glad response.

Then Shirley continued, “Whatcha gonna eat?”

“Three eggs over easy, light toast, bacon, grits, and a glass of orange juice,” I ordered.

“No grits up here, hon, just hashed browns,” advised Shirley.

I would have never ordered such a large meal, but again in keeping the faith with Nate’s directives, did so anyway.

Nate is, as my grandmother called him, “A real squirrel.” Still I loved the man, why else would I follow his word for word direction? What if this does turn out to be a fool’s errand?

Those uncertainties then put to immediate ease, as if on cue, the Johnny Nash classic, “I Can See Clearly Now” played from the radio.

This was a sign filling me with renewed confidence. You see the first time I really talked to Nate, back in 1973, was also the exact same time I first heard that song. I was just turned thirteen in the second semester of seventh grade.

Then the world was still relatively new to me and so fully alive with all of the optimism, pleasure, and potential Johnny poured into his masterpiece. It was a Friday night, and as usual, I was packed off to spend the weekend with my grandparents. The regular routine there crammed me, my great aunt, and grandmother into her neighbor’s 1957 Chevrolet Bellaire for an evening of frolic at Nub Flanagan’s Place, a landmark in the New Orleans Irish Channel.

Nub’s was a working class joint, short on ambiance, but long on good music and hard drinking men--most whom, after sacrificing their youth to free the world from tyrannical dictatorship, returned home to a country that shelved them into reparative menial labor. At Nub’s, these men weren’t forgotten war relics, but still conquering heroes; Nub himself had lost his left arm from the elbow during the frostbite at Bastogne.

Over the course of many years of weekends at Nubs, I learned firsthand intimate stories of battle from Normandy to Aachen, from the Coral Sea to Iwo Jima; no doubt the reason I became a history teacher.

Nevertheless, on that night, my interest lay elsewhere, specifically outside on the cattycornered brick sidewalk, where three girls, sat, smoked cigarettes, and engaged in giggly conversation.

Having absolutely no earthly idea of how to approach them, I told my grandmother I was going outside for a walk. I then, marched directly across the street and rather than stopping to say “Hi”, instead moved to a sit on a nearby porch stoop. From that vantage point, I could see the girls and clearly hear the jukebox music playing into the street from Nub’s opened doors.

Fully intending to work up the courage to go over and introduce myself, I was gathering enough nerve, when the Johnny Nash song blared out into the night. In that same instant of destiny appeared Nate, his hair combed back with a dab of Brill cream and smelling of witch-hazel, he stopped and asked, “Where ya at, Sonny?”

“Hey, Uncle Nate,” was my answer. “Where you been?”

“1483, in Rome,” smiled Nate, “for the opening of the Sistine Chapel.”

I was pretty sure Nate was drunk. As of all things, he claimed to be a time traveler. But when he pulled a little black book from his pants pocket and began reading details of that hot August day, it was if I were there-- a witness to the occasion. By the time he finished, the girls had vanished and I could hear my grandmother calling my name.

From that point forward Nate became the only constant of every family event. Permanently banished to the children’s table, I always saved a place directly across from him.

Nate lived deep in the piney woods, somewhere north of Amite in a chrome 1947 model Streamliner. After learning to drive in 1975, I would often sneak off on ninety-mile trips of adventure to Nate’s. On those wonderfully rare occasions when Nate was home, we spent weekends drinking beer, fishing the Tangipahoa River, and sitting beside the fire pit. That was until the month of April 1978.

That weekend I found Nate somehow dramatically changed. As was custom, I opened our fireside chat with, “Where you been?”

Looking directly into my eyes, Nate proclaimed, “To see Jesus.”

Thrown off guard, I sarcastically responded, “You look alive to me.”

“No, not in that way,” lectured Nate. “I went to hear the Sermon on the Mount.”

“Ok,” I amused with a stammer, “How was it?”

“Breathtaking,” whispered Nate.

Thinking I finally got him, I retorted, “How would you know, did Jesus speak in English?”

“That didn’t matter,” claimed Nate. “His words are understood in any language hearing them.”

With that, Nate went to sleep promising we’d talk more in the morning. The next day I awoke to discover him gone. Soon thereafter off to college, the inflexibilities of school, work and life began fading my thoughts of Nate, until finally they were no more.

That was until January 17, 2021. Correctly factoring the wildcard variables of coronavirus into my standard football wagering equation had proven a season’s long disaster. I was in the hole owing Big Brad Breaux $1,200. Figuring to get right, I took the Saints for $1,500 giving three points to the Bucs. Unfortunately on that day, Tampa Bay didn’t need the points consequently I then owed $2,700.

Frantic one of Breaux’s boys would show up at work and harass me in front of a class, I hit Interstate 55 hoping to clear my head. Moving past the city lights of Hammond, the highway became uncharacteristically quiet, void of traffic, so scrambling my judgement of time passage. Just then passed by an old friend, mile marker eight-two, Nate’s exit.

The last I heard Nate and his trailer had been washed away with the floods of Katrina. Still that spot was far enough removed off grid to offer temporary cover. Resolving to sleep in my car and make a fresh go of it in the morning, I turned onto the dirt driveway only to be flabbergasted when my headlamps reflected off the trailer’s chrome finish.

I thought, “Now, that’s weird”, but taking any port in a storm, I entered the trailer and then turned on the lights. In the refrigerator I found a gallon of milk stamped with an expiration dated for the upcoming week. I poured a glass and sat at the flimsy card table centering the room. Set atop the table, that first black book.

Paperclipped to the inside cover, a scratch-off lottery ticket worth $400. Now, more than curious, I carefully studied the subsequent pages of detailed instructions, which promised to get me out of this mess. Following them to the letter, I woke up the next morning, drove to the Piggly Wiggly, cashed in the ticket, and then purchased ten cans of potted meat, a jar of mayonnaise and a loaf of bread.

By noon, I was onboard The City of New Orleans, a northward journey in reverse order to Arlo Guthrie’s haunting expose’ of bygone Americana. At Chicago, I transferred onto the west bound Empire Builder, another train of inspiration featured in the film “Continental Divide”.

Two days later arriving into the Portland dawn, the bread was hard and the potted meat gone. In distressed need of a bath, I removed the key taped to the back of the book and moved to locker 51, only to discover that second black book.

Desperate to read it, I instead tempered my impatience by reanimating Nate’s instructions to do so over breakfast. In the end, it was all well worth the wait, rather it be hunger, culinary artistry, or new instructions from the second book, that breakfast was the best I ever ate.

Nate continued his weird clandestine methodology: writing the numbers: 41978 on page one; followed by orders to play this combination in that night’s Pick Five game. The remaining pages stapled together around the edges contained a warning not to break the seal until after the lotto numbers were broadcasted.

Leaving nothing to chance, I re-pocketed both books, tipped Shirley, and made my way onto the streets. No sooner than I rounded the first corner, again the slogan, “Keep Portland Weird” this time painted across the entire length of a brick wall pointed my way clear to a lottery retailer.

Later, with ticket in hand and $37 in my pockets, I slumped purposelessly about town until stumbling across the battered King George Hotel, the two-star dump, hardly deserving of the name. I nonetheless rented a room because of its $25 cost.

In my room the TV showed MSNBC; Andrea Mitchell’s show was just beginning. Then falling into an almost instant sleep, I did not wake until the sounds of Brian Williams’s voice filled the room. Startled that I miss the drawing, I fumbled with the remote, landed on a local television station just in time to witness the numbers come in, and then suddenly I was $20,000 richer.

Nate had come through, but how and to what ends? He had to be more than 105 years old by now. After pulling the staples and reading the rest of the book, it was made clear. All of this wasn’t means to that end, rather a means for something far greater. I was being recruited to enter the ranks of time travelers. Enthusiastic to join their order, I went about completing the remaining initiatory task with great care.

First: flying back to New Orleans, I immediately paid Brad his just due--as time travelers must leave no unfinished business.

Second: I completed my spring teaching assignment; Nate was adamant I not run out on my students. Obviously, one of my kids has his eye, although he would not reveal which one.

Third: I was to purchase my first little black book and then memorialize the events here within. Seems little black books are perfect for time travelers easily carried and impossible to hack.

My last directive started with instructions for booking passage aboard British Airways, June 15, 2021, flight 112 from New York’s JFK Airport to London. While Nate’s guidelines for my arrival at Heathrow are quite explicit, I shall not reveal them here, fearing interference from some enterprising reader. The trip being a future event.

I will say my future does include plans to write down every detail of my forthcoming travels with Uncle Nate in what should become a constantly growing stack of little black books. In that light, I will be most eager to share my accumulated journals with the world should an ambitious publisher possess the enormous foresight necessary to print them.