Three D's: Dave, Diamond, and...

Got a call today from an old friend. Many of you know him - David Terrell, possibly known by his gambling industry monkier, "Diamond." Dave has been a poker dealer since the age of 21, which makes 14 years of flinging cards.

I wasn't even 14 years old when I met Dave. I was 11, and it was the first day of sixth grade in Mr. Reichardt's class at Pine Middle School. By random chance, Dave and I ended up sitting next to each other. As I recall, we laughed our way through the entire final three periods of the day. Mr. Reichardt told us he'd definitely be splitting the two of us up.

Didn't work, though.

By the time we were fourteen, it seemed I'd known him forever. Of course, knowing someone since the first day of sixth grade when you're in eighth grade indeed did seem like forever then.

I'll never forget Dave nearly poisoning me and Stan to death during the Science Club trip to Catalina that year. It was a muggy June day in 1983, and Dave spent the night down the street at Stan's house that night. Earlier in the day (the day before the trip), he made sub sandwiches for the three of us, cleverly packed inside of Cheetos canisters (kind of like Pringles cans - same materials, with a plastic lid, only shorter and squatter and with a wider diameter that would accomodate a hoagie roll). I remember two days before him taking my order: baloney and mayo on white. (I was a boy of simple tastes, I freely admit). He made my sandwich, and Stan's as well, to order. The next morning, we headed off to the Port of Long Beach in the back of my dad's 1975 Ford Courier pickup. (Apparently, kids didn't fall out of the back of trucks then). We got on the boat, and spent much of the day running around Avalon. Actually, we ran around in the hills above Avalon - we were in our middle school "explorer" phase, so, after about a half hour of blowing quarters in the video arcade at the Marina, we headed off into the hills. Our coolest discovery: an actual cash register - badly beaten up, more than likely empty, laying in the middle of a field. Despite the fact that it A) weighed what seemed like fifty pounds and B) bore the scars of numerous attempts to open it up, we spent a good hour pummelling the thing with rocks and sticks, all in vain.

Somehow, in our youthful drive, we actually managed to leave it behind. As an adult (or even as an older teenager), I wouldn't give up on such a treasure until it lay in one-inch-square pieces at my feet, and I'd determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that not one penny remained in the till. At fourteen, it seemed, greed got trumped by adventure - finding out what was over that hill. (Someone's summer cottage, it turned out). Greed was also beaten out by another, still stronger drive in fourteen-year-old boys - no, not lust (although I did ask Kathy Wiest to "go around" (early 80's SoCal middle school lingo for "going out") with me on the voyage back to Long Beach - DENIED!), but a hunger that is possibly more base, more primary - a hunger that is, well, hunger. Beating up a cash register with rocks can make a guy pretty hungry. And Dave had three Cheetos cans, each one carrying its precious cargo of a sub sandwich, much like a culinary mummy, sealed in a cardboard-wrapped, plastic-lidded, Cheeto dust-encrusted sarcophagus.


Y'know, there's one other way those Cheeto canisters were like sarcophagi.


Mummies in sarcophagi, well, decompose.


Rot.


Go bad.


Like an old apple in a compost bin.


Like the mangled body of roadkill on Highway 14 heading into Camas.


Like a mayonnaise-slathered baloney sandwich prepared 36 hours earlier, carried in a cardboard Cheetos canister in a fourteen-year-old boy's backpack for eight hours in the summer sun on Catalina Island.


It's probably a good thing, in retrospect, that Kathy Wiest told me no to going out with her, because it probably doesn't make a good first impression to spew your lunch all over your new girlfriend.

I don't remember much about the boat ride back to the Marina, except for the fact that I cared less and less about the fact that Kathy had run my heart through a meat grinder and more and more about figuring out where the head was on the boat. (That's bathroom to you landlubbers out there, or potty for anyone with children under five).

I have many stories I can tell about Dave - over twenty years' worth. But this post is titled "Three D's: Dave, Diamond, and..."



The third "D" is for "Daddy." Dave and his wife Anita are having a baby! (For those of you out of the loop, Dave and Anita married in April).

Even as I wait for my children (possible travel time - November '04), I rejoice for my dear, old friend - I wish those of you who know him could have heard the sheer, unmitigated joy in his voice on the phone today as he told me I'm gonna be a daddy!


One piece of advice, though, from another expectant (adoptive) father who knows:



Don't feed the kid baloney sandwiches with mayo.