I’m at Lenny’s Nosh Bar on a late-summer afternoon and the University of Oregon campus hasn’t fully repopulated yet so the joint seems like a half-abandoned outpost.

I’m digging into a giant hot meatball sandwich with a Löwenbräu chaser and marinating in the same low-grade shame that’s been dogging me from San Antonio to San Francisco and all the way back to Eugene.

My triumphant return after being discharged from the Air Force did not come with the ticker-tape parade I was promised. Seems there’s no civic prize for an idealistic adult child of flower children who infiltrates a system in hopes of changing it.

Only an hour ago I was downtown, getting off a Greyhound and daydreaming of a hot shower to wash away the stench of cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and that undefinable aroma unique to cross-country buses.

Walking to the nosh bar, stripped down to my military issue pants and a tie-dyed tank top and a duffle bag on my shoulder, I probably looked like some weird hippie-Rambo-hybrid come home from the war.

I knock back the last swallow of beer, lean into the duffel bag wedged beside me, and close my eyes. A twelve-bar blues line spools from the jukebox. It’s Green Onions by Booker T. & the MGs, with its Hammond B3 organ pulsing in sync with my heartbeat.

A hometown welcome if there ever was one.

The bell over the door rings. I glance up. There’s Lenny Nathan, strolling into the Nosh Bar like he owns the place. He spots me, arches an eyebrow, and heads straight for the tap. A moment later he sets a fresh pint in front of me, unasked, which is quite unusual.

Then, with that magician-casual flair he perfected over decades, he pulls a joint from the pocket of his apron and drops it beside the glass.

“I told ya so,” Lenny says.

But there’s humor and understanding in his eyes.

I grin back just as Ella Fitzgerald starts singing Too Young for the Blues.

Richard La Rosa ~ 8/24/1985