I hate to see people categorized. I’m only interested in racial issues because I’m interested in differences, and I’m only interested in differences because I’m interested in love, which is how we transcend them. -BMS

I wanted to tell you that RW was crying in part because of the presidential race, but in part because of DarylTripp. He said, "I wish Daryl was here to see this." Which would have been great, yeah.

We're going to DT's service tonight. He is to have one here, and then, one in Cinci, where he is from. He'll be buried down there.

Jackie called R yesterday and she wanted to ask him about the car DT had just dropped to us 2 weeks before. She told R that D wanted it for her for school... she is getting ready to return to school... and he thought that this car would get better gas mileage. R puts engines in cars for D every once in awhile, even though they are both mechanics. R is just a better one. So anyhow, Jackie asked RW about it and Royce told her he would take care of it. At supper last night when R was telling me about their conversation, I asked, "Ok....., and how does one charge money to the widow of one's friend...." The look of his face told me that he didn't know, but Nick piped up, "You don't." And so, ofcourse, we won't.

When DarylTripp came in to the shop... I can hardly imagine that I won't ever see him walk through that bay door again.... but, he came in a few weeks ago to tell R that he'd be dropping off the car, and RW couldn't understand him. He said that, "I'm sorry I can't understand you DT." Because Daryl had just had another surgery to remove more of the cancer under his face, so he wasn't healed enough, he sounded muffled, and RW said to me, "When he walked in here, he was so skinny and scarred, I didn't even recognize him. I could hardly make out anything he was telling me..." But, when they spoke on the phone the last time, Daryl warbled, "They said they got it all this time, it's all gone."

R asked Jackie about that last night, she said, "That's what they told us, that it was gone...but the next week he was in such pain and the next PET scan they did showed them... it was everywhere." And so, Daryl died a few days ago, just a week or so after they told him he'd live.

When RW met Daryl and Chris at the Toyota dealership 10 years ago they told Royce that when he first came in they thought he was with the KKK. This came out one day while they were out to lunch. RW laughed and asked, "Why?" Thinking it had to do with his blonde, bald head, they told him it had to do with the tattoo on his right arm: a long, large, red lightning bolt. When he recollected this to me last night he laughed, then under his breath, he muttered, "goofballs..."

And they were, the three of them. I think that when RW met DT, even more than Chris, they were fast companions because they were both funny, in spite of their mutually difficult backgrounds. DT having been raised in the city and in gangs, having a child when he was 15 and having been wounded with gunfire... RW, hard times in the country, poor, violent end to an absent father. But in spite of it, they maintained this overall... joviality and a certain optimism, both pulling themselves out of the circumstances they were brought up in and trying to find a place in the world to be the men they wanted to be. And sometimes I think they brought to one another a carefreeness as they were going through this boy/man-to-man kind of transition together. Being boys often, though; playing together. Most days during lunch they would head over to Magic Mountain and race the little cars, or play the games, and they had some kind of competition going on all the time, just being silly.

Royce brought in a chessboard to their shop once so that they could have tournaments during downtime. It drove their manager, Ron, crazy because they set up the board in the middle of the bays, and when he would walk by one of the guys would be standing over the board, in deep concentration, contemplating their next move. Ron would complain that they weren't working, but they were, just killing time between jobs.

One time they made a crown out of shop towels for Daryl and draped a plastic floor cloth around his shoulders, they blew up a rubber work glove and tied it to the end of a broom handle, like a staff. He sat up on his tool box and when Ron walked through the shop yelling at them to stop playing, Daryl hollered back, "But I'm the KING!"