Aohn Janderson

I used to work in a pizza place. In the mornings I opened the store for the lunch rush with a retired Southwestern Bell employee named Ron. He used to sing this song in the mornings - I never liked it, but he sang it exactly the way John Anderson sings it and somehow managed to sound exactly like him as well. After I quit working at the pizza place I ran into him a few times and we became friends on Facebook, but we really lost touch.

Then one day, out of the blue, he just showed up at my house. We had been grocery shopping and had just returned home and Ron pulled up in his big grey truck, smoking a cigar (he would go on long drives to hide his smoking habit from his wife). It was a random happenstance - he'd just happened to be driving by, didn't know that we lived there. But it seemed like it wasn't random, for some reason. Ron already knew the older kids, they'd met while we were working together, but he had never seen the baby. She was still a baby at the time, and Ron smiled in his exaggerated, toothy way. Then he say goodbye and drove off. A month later I heard he died. Didn't get to make it to the funeral.

Ron loved dogs. And he loved children. And he loved country music. And he loved talking to people. And he loved it when things at the lunch counter ran smoothly. He didn't really mind when they didn't (which, due to my, um, unprepared ((read: hungover)) state, was often), and I was lucky to know him.

Thank you Ron.

Love,
Jack.