One of my favorite things to do when I'm out and about is engage in conversations with random people. The longer and more frequently you do this, the more likely you are to run into some of the most interesting people you've ever met. This is a documentation of those interactions. Documentation is beginning in March of 2026, so stories from prior to that are being recalled via my relatively poor memory and may be at least partially hallucinated.
Today, at the cafe I usually visit for lunch, I met an old man named Dave. I asked where he was from, and he told me he didn’t know. I asked what that meant, and he told me that he’d been all over the place, so much that he didn’t really know how to answer that question. Los Angeles, he supposed. I think he was born around here, in central Minnesota, but he spent his formative years in California. Dave was probably in his mid to late 70s, and he was built like a garden gnome. Short, broad, friendly round face built for a smile. He spent 31 years working as a mobile DJ in the Twin Cities and around Minnesota, working at bars and events. His music knowledge was vast. He was pulling artists that I’d never ever heard of in a million years off the dome, obscure 60’s one-hit-wonders like Strawberry Alarm Clock and Easybeats. That man would shred at music trivia at the bar. I asked if he had a good music collection, he told me he’d recently organized all of his CDs by genre and thinned his vinyl down to only ~2000. His daughter was probably going to call a dump truck for it after he died, he supposed. He had been drafted in 1969, but thankfully had gone to Germany instead of Vietnam. When he was discharged in 1971, he ended up in Los Angeles, where he’d worked as a maintenance welder at the tuna factories on Terminal Island in the harbor. Starkist, Charlies, didn’t matter, he said, it all came off the same boats. A friend of his named Ernie was a luthier, and one day Dave made a comment to him about how much he’d like to meet that Waylon Jennings. A few days later, Ernie invited Dave over for dinner after work, and about 6:30 the doorbell rang. They opened the door, and who the hell else was standing there but Waylon Jennings, in the flesh. Ernie the luthier had been working on a guitar for him, and had just finished it, so Waylon stopped by to pick it up, and he ended up staying there for dinner. Dave got to know him, and years later his daughter ended up occasionally babysitting for him during concerts in the Minnesota area. Beyond that, he’d met Johnny Cash and Jim Morrison in passing, at shows in LA. Things were different back then, Dave said. The big stars didn’t have security like they do now, you could go up and talk to them after the show. I asked Dave why the hell he came back here after living in Socal, what with the weather and all. He told me that the weather was the least of his problems. I asked what sort of other problems he had, and he glanced back at Dawn, the waitress, before he said “Women, I guess.” He laughed as Dawn retorted, “Yeah, says the guy who’s been married three times.” Dave was on his way to get a haircut after lunch. Very interesting and friendly guy. Banger of a stranger conversation.
One day at the cafe, I sat near a wizardly old man, over well 6 feet tall, rail thin, with long long wispy gray hair and an equally long and wispy beard. He had the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen, electric blue, and he was missing his right arm completely. I don’t remember most of our conversation, but he spoke with intelligence, and a quick fluid snap that belied his age. He told me stories about the glory days, in the early 80s catching freight trains from Eastern Colorado through the Rockies to the west coast, of doing substances and having fun in the mountains out there. Never saw him before, or again. He’d been missing his arm a long time, he used his left hand like Mr. Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks, like it was all he had left. I suppose it was.
I was on my way to Denver from Moab in my Honda Insight, it was very hot out despite having driven through a torrential downpour that flooded out the desert along I-70 just 50 miles earlier. I was out of drinks and snacks, so I stopped at the first gas station I saw after crossing the border from Utah into Colorado. Outside the station, there was a picnic table that seemed as good a place as any to smoke a cigarette. Sitting on the other side of the table was a very old man, shaggy and dirty, very homeless-looking. His face was heavily tanned and more wrinkle than skin. I lit up my smoke and asked him how he was doing. He looked up and immediately began shuffling through his bag, showing me what he’s been doing. He had a notepad that was full of what appeared to be shakily penned differential equations, he told me he’d been doing math. Sure, why not. He asked me where I was going, I told him Denver. I asked where he was going, and he told me Albuquerque. But he was hitchhiking, and he’d been sitting out here all day trying to get a ride. Unfortunately, I wasnt going to Albuquerque. But he told me that was alright, he just needed to get to the bus station in Grand junction, about 20 miles down the road. I thought about it as I continued talking to him, and eventually decided he was harmless and I’d think about it. He was very old, friendly, and he seemed to have a bit of the dementia haze about him. I went inside, bought two big bottles of water, one for me and one for him, and asked the lady at the register about him. Her face was of hesitant concern, told me he’d been sitting out there all week. I told her I was going to give him a ride, and she said thank you. I’m not sure if she was relieved for his sake, or for the sake of getting the hobo off the front of her store. Either way. I went out and told him that I was going to give him a ride. He attempted to offer me a graphing calculator from his bag in exchange for the ride, I told him to keep it. He was extremely thankful, excited, animated. We put his backpack and his big trash bag of belongings in the hatch of my car, and piled in. He smelled pretty bad, but thankfully my AC didn’t work so it was windows down anyways. We pulled out onto i70 east, towards Grand Junction, and I asked him about himself. He told me his name was Ray, and he had been a commercial building painter all his life. He gave me some very specific wisdom concerning this: He told me, “listen kid, working for a living is bullshit. I spent 30 years painting self-storage units for the same guy, I watched his little empire grow as he got richer, and my back hurt worse and worse. My body is ruined, and look where I am now. If you really want to get ahead in the world, you gotta get into self-storage units. They pay for themselves. Dont waste your time working for nothing.” I asked him why he was going to Albuquerque, and he gave me an animated sigh. He told me that his wife had died, and his son-in-law had put his assets in a trust and stuck him in a nursing home. He hated it in there, he couldn’t stand being cooped up with all those old people, and he couldn’t access any of his own hard-earned money, so he broke himself out and was currently hitchhiking to Albuquerque to speak to the bank, and to punch his son-in-law. I was thinking to myself that there was probably a reason he had been put in the home, his thoughts seemed quite scattered, and I don’t think he was aware that he had been sitting outside of that gas station for an entire week. Seemed like dementia to me. But he’d gotten this far, so all I could really do was help him on his way. I took him to the bus station, thanked him for his advice and company, and made sure he got inside safely. 3 years on, I wonder if Ray is still alive, or if he ever made it to Albuquerque to punch his son-in-law. He didn’t seem terribly long for the world. Wherever you are, Ray, I hope you’re doing alright. I have been heavily considering investing in self-storage units.