The air was cool and the sleeping bag warm when I heard the early morning loon from across Buck Pond. 

It was about 15 minutes into meeting Sailor Steve and Texas Jeff when I knew I’d met some of the wildest souls on this damn planet. 

I was already 10 minutes late to my niece’s seventh birthday party some 20 minutes away last Sunday afternoon. 

He walked into the bar, grabbed a seat next to me, and proceeded to order four shots of Jameson Irish whiskey. He was surrounded by two friends to the left and one friend (me) to the right. I figured he was buying us a round, even if I wasn’t in the mood for liquor this past Monday evening.

My eyes shot open when the air-conditioning unit kicked on. It took me a couple of moments to realize where I was. Our room was dark and silent. The queen-sized bed, sheets and pillows were extremely comfortable, and damn well better be if you’re paying a pretty penny to stay at the Wyndham Garden in Greensboro. 

It was just about 8:30 a.m. when I awoke in my pickup truck last Saturday. 

Sitting in the waiting room of my hometown mechanic last week, I knew it wasn’t good when he called for me to come into the repair bay. The rusty, musty Toyota Tacoma pickup was up on the rack. And the look on the mechanic’s face wasn’t one of optimism. 

Woke up this morning with the thought of the impending summer, impending “state of being” for all of us slowly sliding back towards to some sense of normalcy amid “all this.” 

Coming to a stop at the end of the off-ramp of Exit 40 along Interstate 87 last Saturday evening, I turned right and headed down the Spellman Road. Entering the small hamlet of Beekmantown, New York, it’s a few miles from the off-ramp to my parents’ farmhouse. 

It is with an extremely heavy heart that I share the news of the passing last Friday morning of Brian Power (aka: “Mr. P”) after a long, debilitating illness.