While walking through a neighborhood in Susanville I heard a deep voice holler at me: “Hey! Would you help a disabled senior unload some boxes for $5?” I looked over and saw a mildly fat man with bulging eyes and a sly little grin staring at me through a car window. That’s how I first met Bobby. When I completed moving the boxes into his new funky one-bedroom cottage, I declined a rum and coke, but we sat and chatted, Bobby in his wheelchair. Bobby had a wheezy laugh and when he laughed his eyes bulged even more. And somehow we kept making each other laugh.

I ended up stopping by every evening for a week, doing tasks and having a little chat. Doing things like hanging art, re-lighting the heater's pilot light, fixing shelving, and installing wall handles in the bathroom, which he uses everyday and says he thinks about me every time he uses them. One day I happily mopped up dried diarrhea liquid from the kitchen floor while we played Bobby's Drifters CD.

When Bobby found out I was Jewish by blood but didn't often tell people, he said, "Crow that shit." Bobby said he loved Jewish people and that they've always been a friend of the black man. He started affectionately calling me Jew, which I was enjoying, in the way that only a big black man can do.

Bobby kept telling me that he really enjoyed my company, and started calling me everyday. His daily voicemails were a little much, but I still enjoyed visiting him each day around sunset. He kept trying to pay me for the various handy-man/caretaker tasks I was performing. However, it felt so good to leave money out of it, and perhaps that’s the basis for deep, true, friendship.

Often I'd come into Bobby's house and there'd be an offensive kind of B.O. & urine odor in the air, but we'd talk about it, laugh about it, and I'd aggressively flap the front door open and closed like fireplace bellows to freshen the place up.

One night Bobby suddenly opened up about his past and told me stories about his life before Susanville. He was surprised he told me, and said he never tells anyone about it. The history was wild and I was fascinated. All I will say is that Bobby was a ladies' man. I'd love to share some riveting details here, but I promised him I wouldn’t. And I realized when someone trusts you and share's their secrets, it's a priceless gift.

Bobby needed a part-time caretaker. Before I left town I happened to meet some high school seniors selling Christmas trees in a parking lot. One of them seemed like he could be a good fit for working with Bobby, and I hooked them up. The teen was able to help him for a few months, and wrote to me saying it was a good experience.

Some names and details in this story were changed for privacy reasons