Mr. Bojangles and Tim

Mr. Bojangles

    Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Mr. Bojangles and Tim

Our last Christmas Break was almost over. We decided to head to Tommy’s In Crowd, a favorite bar just across the Erie Lackawanna railroad tracks in New York State.  Park in PA, walk across the tracks, drink in NY.

As we walked in that January night, I saw Tim standing in a darkened corner, alone, holding a beer close to his chest. ‘Mr. Bojangles’ was playing on the jukebox, and he was quietly mouthing the lyrics. I passed by him as I headed toward the bar with our other friends. I nodded and tipped an invisible toast his way. He gave a small smile of recognition in return. But he made no effort to speak or join us. Somewhere in the next few minutes, he left. Quietly and alone.

“What’s up with Tim?” I asked the other guys. “Hell if we know,” was the general reply. “He’s just being weird tonight.”

Tim was a guy we all knew well. Most of us at the bar had quite literally grown up with him. Our parents had been friends since well before we were born. We lived in the same small, interconnected towns, and had gone to school together since kindergarten. Birthdays, First Communions, holidays, church choir, Little League, Sister Eymard. We’d done it all – together.  This wasn’t the buddy we knew.

The guy we knew was a life-of-the-party type. Not that he was overly wild and crazy, but he did know how to have fun. In the process, he made damn sure that everybody else did too. He was a small in stature. As we were growing up, he often got the “Tiny Tim” thing tossed his way, especially during the holidays. He didn’t like it; he wore it well, though.

He was cute, too. Cute. Cute is fine when said in certain ways, but Tim was cute to both guys and girls. In the same way. Not sexy. Not boyfriend, turn-on cute. Rather he was curly haired, blue eyed, snuggle-him-like-a-puppy cute. Over time, we had tell him that was good, that in time the baby-face sweetness would grow into the studly, hulky kind of cute he wished it was then.

But that night, he looked sad and alone. None of us knew why, and now he was gone.

We were getting closer and closer to college graduation. That meant that our days of guys going to bars would soon be coming to a close. Jobs, grad programs, the draft, and several other possibilities were ahead of us. It was the era of the Viet Nam war. Maybe that was the problem. It was not that these things had gone unspoken; on the contrary, we had often discussed our futures with one another. Our futures and our fears. But hypotheticals over beers and impending reality were different animals.

The evening ended. The weekend ended, and we headed back off to college. A little over three and a half years down. Our final semester was upon us.

Back at school, Tim appeared to be his old, cute self again. Initially, anyway.

By that time in our college careers, our course loads were essentially made up of any and all of those courses we had to finish up to meet university or major requirements. There were no surprises, and most of us had those things under our belts anyway. In some cases, there was even room for a course or two just for the enrichment value of taking them.

As it turned out, Tim and one or two others in our group, had one final university-required course to take. An Ethics course, if my memory serves me correctly. It was taught by one of the most popular and well-respected professors on campus, a Jesuit priest who had taught many of us the same course over time. The professor was clear; material was well-delivered, and well-resourced. Course standards and expectations were clearly spelled out. With several graduating seniors enrolled, the bottom line in those pre-Nike days was simply “just do it!”

The semester rolled on. Graduation loomed closer and closer. Murmurs began. Rumor had it that Tim was in trouble. For some reason, it looked like he may not complete the required Ethics course. No details. Then details emerged. One detail, at any rate. Tim was not going to have his required term paper done in time to turn it in. In fact, he had not yet started it. He was refusing to do it. No term paper meant an incomplete for the course. No pass, no credit. Thus, no graduation.

We tried to intervene. We encouraged, nudged, prompted, outlined, and all-but-wrote him forward. Joe, his 4-year college roommate, pleaded. The professor-priest, popular and well-respected, also tried to intervene. At one point, he told Tim that the quality of the paper was of little concern to him at that point. What was of concern was that something – almost anything – get turned in. He told Tim that even if the paper, itself, got an “F”, he would have met the course requirement to submit a paper. His overall grade would not be the best, but he’d at least have met the minimum for graduation. Tim refused. As a result, he did not pass. He did not meet university requirements. He did not graduate.

We were blown away at his behavior and stunned by the consequences. The professor was shocked. Tim’s parents, understandably, were devastated. None of this made any sense at all.

I remembered that Bojangles night at the bar.

For the rest of us, graduation was a time of celebration and a commencement to the rest of our adult lives. But as he had done that night in the bar, Tim walked away.

That is not hyperbole. He literally disappeared. No good-byes. No last shots. No hugs and kisses.  No Tim. For years, there was speculation: he was living and working at some menial job somewhere in the Midwest. No one saw or heard from him, however. No calls, no letters, no indication that he was OK.

Over time, his younger sister married and moved away. His parents died. Word has it that he did acknowledge the death of one of them. But he didn’t come to either funeral nor to his sister’s wedding.

During the intervening decades, with the advent of the internet, a friend located him. As suspected, he was living somewhere in the Midwest. It took a few more years before any semblance of real correspondence would take place. Basically, he eventually let the friend know that, yes, he was alive. Yes, he was fine. No he had never married. And no, he was not coming home. And no, there was no need to share his contact information with anyone else.

Again after several more decades, I received an email from Tim’s sister. As she was a few years younger than I, we’d never been close growing up. Somehow, though, she’d found my contact information as our friend had previously found Tim’s. Her news was not good. Tim was dying. He was in the final stages of a very aggressive pancreatic cancer. At that time, he was living with her and her family somewhere in the New England. She was reaching out to old friends to ask for prayers. Of course, she got them. He got them. Then, in short order, he passed. Again, disappearing quietly in the night. This time, though, not alone.

What had happened so many years before? What had caused Tim to fight so hard to refuse the help we were all there to give? No one knew, not even his sister. He’d shared very little with the friend who’d found him so many years before. From that little, it had apparently been something between him and his mom and dad. But what, we will never know. What we do know is that he died with his family.

I sometimes think back on our college days and the old friends I have not seen in way too many years. I think of that winter night at Tommy’s, our once popular, long-gone hangout. I think back on seeing Tim standing alone in the corner, cradling his beer. We never saw him leave. We didn’t know where he went.

Mr. Bojangles always brings him back.