Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. (I’ll love you forever Karen Carpenter.)
So, it’s during days like this that, from time to time, I think about Carl Swanson. You Missoulians know Carl. Or you remember Carl, rather. He was that guy who looked like Howard Hughes. Not the Leonardo DiCaprio Howard Hughes, but the Jason Robards Howard Hughes.
From a distance, Carl looked like your average, run-of-the-mill homeless guy. Except he always wore a fedora and a London Fog rain coat. In fact, Carl’s duds were pretty impressive … from a distance. Up close, you’d see the fabric of the snappy three-piece suit actually had worn holes in the creases. Up close, if you greeted Carl, you’d be impressed at the deep, resounding tone of his voice. This guy sounded like money. Up close, Carl smelled pretty bad. He didn’t smell like a homeless person. He smelled like a bad second-hand clothing store. He kinda smelled like the 1940s to me. Well, okay … he smelled like the 1940s if the 1940s had rotted and shown up in the 1980s.
Turns out, Carl wasn’t homeless. In fact, he had an apartment in my building.
Once a day, come rain, shine, snow, freezing cold, air quality alerts, you name it, Carl would leave his apartment, all dressed up, and walk up Front Street, cross the Higgins Street Bridge and go to Hansen’s Ice Cream Store to have lunch. I imagined the crew at Hansen’s either gave him lunch or, like his apartment rent, Carl’s lunch money was endowed from an unknown source.
Doesn’t matter.
The fact was, regardless of his situation and the weather, Carl Swanson, the you-could-have-sworn-he-was-homeless guy, made it out of his apartment and into the world on days when I couldn’t. I think that’s probably the key symptom of my gloomy days. I just don’t want to leave. Or rather, my main motivation is to stay. That’s when I know I’m in trouble. I want to stay in bed. I want to stay in the shower. I want to stay in my car. I want to stay at work. You name it, my go-to stance during periods of depression is stasis.
One day, in a fit of pique much like I’ve described above, I stopped Carl in the hall and asked him if he wouldn’t rather come into my apartment for a cup of coffee and some leftovers than venture out into the weather. My friends and neighbors had assured me Carl was harmless. (Once you got past the obvious smell and unshaven face.) In fact, they contended Carl was rather genteel. At the time, his backstory was that he was an executive who had drank himself over the edge, and never quite recovered. His apartment was paid for by a daughter in a far-away city. Unlike many of us who occupied the Colonial Apartments (known affectionately as the Plaza de la Coloniale), Carl always paid his rent … on time.
I wasn’t interested in his life story. I just wanted Carl to come in and have a cup of coffee instead of fending off the 40-below-zero temperatures to cross a frozen river to an ice cream shop that was most likely closed due to the cold.
After a little coaxing, he agreed to come in and sit down at my kitchen table, as long as I put a newspaper on the chair. Don’t know why, but apparently, Carl preferred to sit on a newspaper.
So I put down a newspaper and he gave me his hat and coat.
Here’s the entire conversation:
“It’s really very, very cold out there today, Carl,” said Grant.
“I’ll say,” said Carl.
And that was it. I didn’t engage him, and he didn’t offer much of an explanation for his present state. Or the newspaper. When he was finished, he got up, excused himself, put on his hat and coat and went back upstairs.
But lately, as we continue to be hammered by rain and lonely gray sky, I find I take more and more motivational tips from Carl. Some days, all I need to get started is the promise of a good cup of coffee and a little conversation. And I count myself quite lucky that I have ready access to both.