End of September, Timmy's birthday, he likes to recount that he was conceived on New Year's Eve, that his parents kept the champagne cork!  Anyway, I was remembering a September 30 back about 24 or even 25 years ago. 

Maria and her family and Timmy and I went to the Cape for a weekend.  We stayed at an old house, right on the Ocean Side, in Cohoon Hollow, on the road and steps away from the Beachcomber's Bar...the only ocean side bar in Wellfleet.  As I said, the house was old, has since been torn down and a bigger, one stands in its place.  It had a weird added on deck that you crawled out a window to get on, tiny steep steps that led to the bedrooms.  Rachael was less than five years old, Jer must have been nine or ten.  The house must have been used mostly by college kids, liking the location near the ocean and the bar.  I remember Maria opened the couch, a sleeper, and said, "Ma, don't open the couch...someone threw up in it".  Well that was the house, but the big remembrance of that weekend is Timmy's birthday, and to celebrate, he and Kevin planned a whole night of fishing.

Now fishing was never a sport that Timmy had enjoyed, whereas Kevin every year, got a fishing license and headed to Provincetown.  For this excursion, Kevin had organized a fishing tour for the two of them, and as it happened, Jer went along too.  The guide, a skinny man with a worn face showed up in his truck, his name was Pete L. and Timmy remembered that he had  told them that he had worked in Max's Kansas City in New York,  meeting a lot of hot newcoming performers.  I think Timmy said he played Opera music in the truck.

Anyway, Timmy and Kevin left, each with a supply of beer, Timmy had a case of Yuengling, and I don't remember why, but Jer, just a kid, went with them.  It was a long night for Maria and I, both worried about what was happening in that truck, on the beach and everything else, but mostly what was Jer doing.  Well, when they returned, it turned out that Jer had fallen asleep, so they left him in the truck, locking the doors.  But when they returned to try another location, they couldn't wake him up and were banging on the windows for what seemed forever.  They fishermen returned in bad shape, a night of drinking, no sleep, Timmy had his shoes off, and his feet were raw, probably from fish hooks, but who knows. The guys went right to bed, but Jer disappeared.  Maria and I searched the house, then ran outdoors.  I will never forget the sight of Maria running on the high dune, red hair flying in the wind, screaming frantically for Jer.  Just like the Maria of old, searching for her lost lover, the pirate Black Sam.  Anyway, I soon found Jer, huddled in a small corner of the dune.  I guess the whole experience had just been too much for him, and he had sought a peaceful spot to figure it all out.

I drove home that afternoon, Timmy laying down in the backseat of the car.  A strange birthday, a strange end to September.