Sometimes words are all we have to leave behind
We all have people in our lives that we remember for that one statement they made. The saying or the declaration they shared stuck somewhere inside your head. It’s the only thing you can clearly remember them saying, and it shapes everything you remember about them.
One of those people in my life was Captain Fred. I never know his full name. He’s one of those guys that everyone called Captain Fred. Captain became his first name and Fred his last. He was a rabble-rouser kind of guy and had one of those beards that was mostly white but yellow in those familiar places where beards are yellow.
Wherever he went, Captain Fred ruffled someone’s feathers, and for some reason I grew to like him. Not for his ruffling or for his white and yellow feathers, but because he lived life and he wanted others to know it.
You always knew when Captain Fred was nearby. He had a loud voice and a louder laugh. He wore an old Captain’s Hat. Not the regal black and white kind with embroidered gold leaves, but the blue kind that looked like it had fallen into the rough waters on several voyages.
We lived in a small town when we knew each other and one of the last things he ever told me was that he would “rather go out busted than rusted.” Captain Fred did look a little busted, a little like a beat-up boat. I was…
