[MRM]

Springtime yard sales are a huge up here. One year my wife and I decided to drive around to a bunch and see what the fuss was about. We stopped at one place where there was my favorite type of curmudgeonly single old man selling a bunch of old stuff. On the steps to his garage was a huge ball of copper wire all round around and around on itself so that it was easily the size and shape of a beach ball. He was offering it for a decent discount off the price of scrap copper to make it worth someone's while to take it down to the recycler. I could tell there was a story behind how he accumulated a 150 pound ball of wire, so I asked him.

The winter before he was laid up in his house with hip replacement surgery. He said he couldn't do anything, so he just started winding wire. He kept doing it all winter long until the ball got as big as it was. Then, he said, spring came, he could walk again, and he didn't need to wind wire any more (his words). I realized at that point that we all need a reason to live. It doesn't need to be a good reason, it just needs to be something that means something to us. If an occupation is all someone does, that's all they live for and all they have to live for. It's not surprising that people die when they lose their reason to live.

Many years ago I worked in a kitchen with an old guy named Tom who we creatively called Old Tom. He had retired from the Navy after 20 plus years as an E-4. Never busted, just never promoted. He was that kind of a guy. He transitioned smoothly from the Navy to the kitchen where he feed the automatic dish machine. He was an institution. We even called that position Old Tom. He was the most serious alcoholic I've ever even heard about. When he wasn't working, he was drinking. But he lived for that job. He never took any time off, but every year he built up so much vacation that management would make him take enough time off to burn some of it off. He'd come in on Friday's to pick up his check and shoot the breeze with the people who were working. We were all envious of his time off but he'd tell us how miserable he was and how he wanted to get back to work. At the time I thought he was joking or trying to make us feel better for having to work.

Eventually he got old enough that he retired. I don't remember if he hit some maximum age limit or if someone talked him into it and he finally gave in. He had plenty of pension income and he never spent his whole paycheck, so he was set financially. He had no financial need to work. He retired with several weeks of vacation due, so He kept coming in on Fridays to pick up the checks for his final weeks of vacation before he was formally moved off the payroll. He'd always stop in and shoot the breeze with whoever was working that day. After his checks stopped he didn't come around the kitchen anymore. Something like two months later he hanged himself in his apartment late one night after coming home from the bar. It was very sad. You need something to live for to keep on living.