The phone rang after midnight, alarming even my cat Lady Bug who all but knocked the receiver from the stand jumping from the bed to hide in the closet.

It was from a young man I had not seen or heard from in years, the youngest son of my long-time friend George who on learning of the death of my dear wife, Pat, and knowing me well enough to realize the depth of my grief, had hitched a ride out to my place to keep my company. And no way did he spout the usual and meaningless “You'll see her again in heaven,” “She's gone to her reward” and “God called her home” chatter. Rather, he set a tattered old satchel holding his meager earthly belongings on the floor, gave me a hug and we sat on the floor and cried until falling asleep sometime before daylight. Old George was that way, over-emotional and melancholy, traits that I fully shared which must in some strange way have brought us together when we were both on the juice back in the 1960s.

Anyhow, the midnight caller told me that George had died, out on the street during a chill and lonely night where he had been living on and off for the past several years. Once the owner of a small hamburger stand, beer and marijuana and I-don't-know-what-all had brought him down. He'd live on the streets for a time, the sober up and work odd jobs before falling back on the bottle, Rescue Mission, Poverello House and eventually the street with the police telling him to “move on” a hundred times if they told him once.

The family wanted me to come to the funeral – I assumed to be a pallbearer – but I explained that I did not drive anymore and that at 84, was too old to carry my fair share of the casket and would likely break down and be an embarrassment.

“None of that matters,” said the son, “and we'll pick you up and drive you home.”

Of course I'd go, I said, old George was my true-blue and longtime friend.

I thought a lot about George while he stayed with me a day and a night. For one thing, I remember he was so hungry he ate six eggs, as many slices of toast and a dozen slices of bacon for breakfast. And he was in dire need of a shower, shave and toenail trim and had a couple of what appeared to be knife cuts that needed peroxide, Neosporin and bandaging.

George looked around the living room at my antiques, a Victor “His Master's Voice” wind-up phonograph, Regulator wall clock and old brass bird cage with mild interest, but seemed enthralled standing in front of my bookcase.

“Have you read all of these books?” he asked.

“Many I have, and others are for reference in my writing.”

“Read me some poems,” he said, “I haven't read or heard a poem since I was a kid.”

I looked through my sparse collection and pulled out something I thought would interest him, “The Complete Poems of Robert W. Service,” and settled on “The Lone Trail” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

Actually, there's not much I'd rather do than read poems aloud. In fact I do so often but rarely to an audience. People as a rule, I think, sluff poetry off as old-hat stuff. Well, not I who listened many a time to Charles B. Garrigus, late California Poet Laureate, Reedley College professor, poet and novelist. And oh, how he could recite poems, especially on the creaking old Cayucos pier on a moonlit night and the long crest of waves catching what he called “moon fire” before crashing and dying on the shore.

I mean, he was like a bellering Roman Senator, and while there had initially been no one around to listen, suddenly there were a dozen, including young couples holding hands and I don't know anything more beautiful than that.

It turned out that old George wanted me to read the whole damn 700+ page Robert W. Service book, and “The Men Who Don't Fit In” three or four times.

Presently however, I reached for Robert Frost and read him “The Road Not Taken.”

Old George looked at me and wept when I bellered out that last verse in my best Garrigus manner:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made the difference.

“I should have taken the other road,” George admonished himself.

Well, it turned out that his family didn't want me to be a pallbearer as I'd first thought which had worried me because I've always been one to carry my fair share of the load. Rather, they wanted me to sit with the family, and I probably wept as much or more as any of them.

As I watched Old George's casket lowered into the ground, I suddenly thought of Robert Frost's poem again and the line about “two roads diverged in a wood” that so enthralled him. I'd never thought of it before, but either way, old George would have ended up here anyhow because the two roads eventually came to the same end.

And then it occurred to me that this is also that “On” place that police are continually telling street people to move to, but they won't be telling Old George that anymore.

(Comments to the writer: vallefox@accessbee.com)