I played amateur storm chaser today! Not really, I don’t have the spine for that kind of work. I did however get some nice footage of the severe storms that rolled through our area. From a safe, though spectacular location.
Tornadoes in the valley have been a little more common the last few years. When I was growing up, many old timers claimed the mountains protected us from tornados. This day looked like we were missing out on the brunt of the storm. I was proven right by the worst weather reports occurring mostly south and west from my present location. So, when my work got cut off as the storm approached, I went to higher ground. Namely, the highest elevated parking garage I know about in the area. If nothing else, I would get some great footage!
Now as for what I have been thinking about today. My old friend Eve, she was a mentor of mine when I definitely needed one. She had a quality I always have come to respect in people and that is her heart was strong, but fair! She would forgive a major fuck up if only you meant well, and she saw something in you. Now if you were wasting her time, she would let you know. “Now, this is what is going to happen…” was her calling card! Eve passed away this time of year a couple years ago right when I was first trying to get sober. I had not hit my rock bottom yet. I was getting close to ground rock, but I had some dynamite saved for that.
Eve I met when I first came to Gino’s. I had been with the company a couple of days when she stopped by to introduce herself. I should have paid attention to her calm demeanor and mimicked that, but what struck me about Eve was that she didn’t take shit off anyone!
Eve had come up in the Gino’s company a long time ago. Her and one of the founders “Mr. C” had been through thick and thin together. I always got the impression that he and Eve had agreed that he would take care of her. Otherwise, why would she stay for 40 years! Stay Eve did, she had been with the company since it only had a few locations on the Charleston side of things. She knew all the dirt on Mr. C and I felt that was why he would take care of her. Now Eve was a catch in her younger days, quite fetching even in her later years with an approachable classy kind of beauty. Mr. C had a wondering eye as was well known in the community and at work. I say this because I always got the impression that she was maybe what he wanted but could not have.
Like I was saying, I had been with the company only a day or two when I first met Eve. She arrived, and it was like a celebrity was showing up… maybe not quite, but she was most definitely in charge and people wanted to impress. Eve was to be my direct supervisor because I was training to be a General Manager, meaning I would have a store of my own at some point. At the time Eve was managing at least 8 stores, and I didn’t know any of that I just knew she was important, and I wanted that job!
I hit the ground running, and despite my budding alcoholism I had one thing on my side. I didn’t think I was an alcoholic, so I was very functioning! After spending a few months at my first assignment in Cross Lanes, Eve left on medical leave due to a flair up of an auto-immune disorder that left her bedridden. She was sent to a rehab facility to learn to walk again, and stubborn as all get out, checked herself out as soon as she could and went home to rehab herself. Her family needed her! Eve always talked about her family, and they meant so much to her. She was “Mom”
While Eve was out I transferred stores to what I called the flagship store, the store so wonderful they gave it the number 1! I spent longer than I thought I was going to at Nitro, starting to grow impatient. But Eve came back near the end of that time, and best of all I was going to train with her which meant two days a week we would spend 10-hour days riding around and working together. The first thing she said to me when I got in her car for district manager training was “We are concerned with the big picture!”
Something about the way she talked just made me want to pay attention to her. Everyone around me talked and joked about being scared of Eve, and I was scared to piss her off too, but I had so much respect for her! I will talk more about Eve in the future.
However, I wanted to talk about something in particular with Eve. I think I may have been the last person she talked to. Not that it upsets me or anything, but I was thinking about the last thing people say before they die today. Not sure why, but with Eve she might have been the only time I think I had a last conversation with someone. Eve came down with Covid, and as an older person with other health challenges, she never recovered. She was in and out of the hospital the last year of her life and declined so much over so long. I don’t know what to say about the experience other than I took it on more than I had any right too.
Throughout the time I knew her she introduced me to her family; we had gone to funerals together. Her best friend and I visited her in the hospital for the last time, and it took a little out of me to see her like that. She didn’t seem to know where she was, but she was scared! When we left, Tammy looked at me and said that would be the last time we saw her…
A few days later I took Chas to the casino for one of the comp rooms my alcoholism used to afford me. I went down for a cigarette before bed and while I sat outside in the March or April rain my phone rang. It was Eve, she hadn’t called me in months, so I answered right away. Eve sounded kind of calm, certainly more with it and cogent than she had been the last time I saw her. She told me she was tired, I cut right in because I knew what to say “You are the strongest person I know!” I had said it to her so many times before that I believed it. She said something that made me instantly not believe it anymore. Not in any ill or malicious manner, but as a resignation to the fact. She told me “I am so tired of people telling me I’m strong, I am scared, and I want to go home!”
I fell silent, “What can I do?” I thought I said, but I didn’t I instead knew to just sit and be with this human being. We sat mostly in silence, I am taking puffs on my cigarette and really wanting to get back upstairs to my Vodka… I did sit with her for a while, I lost track of time, but it wasn’t more than 30 minutes. She said goodbye to me, and it seemed so natural. I think I knew that was the last time I would hear from her, but the alcohol had taken all of my emotion, so I calmly went upstairs and went to bed. I don’t think I even said much about it to Chas. The next morning, Eve passed away.
The last things someone says to you stick with you, it has a way of getting in your sole. Almost like a spiritual possession if this was olden times. Their spirit quite literally makes itself felt in you. As far as I know that might be the only afterlife we get, but it is something!
Thank you for riding with me!
Visibility: Partly Cloudy / Tornado Warning (2:00:00)
*GPS Coordinate Data Provided on bottom left corner with date and speed*
Destinations in West Virginia by appearance:
South Charleston
Dunbar
Institute (5:30)
Cross Lanes
Nitro (10:00)
Saint Albans (19:00)
Southridge/US119 (1:00:00)
Jefferson Road – RHL Boulevard Interchange WV601 (1:10:00)
Montrose (1:20:00)
Charleston (1:47:00)
US119 – I64
Eagle View Apartments (Tornado Warning) (2:07:00)
West Virginia Capitol Complex (2:20:00)
Piedmont Road (Historical Triangle Neighborhood) (2:25:00)
Downtown – Town Center Redevelopment (2:30:00)
South Charleston – Former Dow Chemical Research Laboratories (2:56:00)
Spring Hill (3:07:30)
https://noggy.org – The Noggy.Net
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570980376051 – my Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt53MMb1R6eOf49jw7LQkPw – my YouTube
https://venmo.com/noggynet – my Venmo
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