Old Men Talking: On a Father's Love

It is hard to say when this group of old men first met. ​When one of Rudy’s employees asked, for a bemused moment they all strained to recall, but then they decided it wasn’t really that important. ​It was though; it was one of those nagging questions that if not answered supposed that they were too old to remember.

Old men in Texas gathering around the stove
​to talk crops, politics, life and survival.

​So ever since, one of them would bring to the meeting a new remembrance—a selective remembrance, an imprecise remembrance, a remembrance tainted by time.

​They knew their memories were fallible; old men blur reality with wishful ruminations like the too-often-told, one-that-got-away fish story.

​With each new recollection, they positioned the memory as if it were a piece in a puzzle, using their communal timeline to see if the edges fit. ​They believed that their joint memories would eventually uncover that initial conversation that made Rudy’s 360 what it was today: a breakfast-home away from home and a reenactment of an old Texas settlers’ tradition, a gathering of old men discussing life with all its twists and turns.

​Sometimes these discussions could turn faster than a cuttin’ horse, and gore quicker and deeper than an ornery steer.

​Today was an example.
​
Mike asked, “Jim, what do you think of all this hoopla over the definition of marriage?”

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