Summer of 1992

I was in the throes of the "grunge" scene, Wichita Falls-style. Mostly, I couldn't get enough of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. And I had just discovered Temple of the Dog. I was 16 years-old and only interested in music, The Simpsons and movies. Oh, how things have changed.

I worked as the lowest possible rank on a construction crew because I couldn't saw straight, nail straight, avoid knocking over a ladder someone was standing on, stand on a roof without sliding off... the list goes on. So I usually swept or hid in boxes.

But demo! Hell, yeah I could tear up some shit. So I was tearing the weird, fibrous wall covering that was on top of the wallpaper, which had to come off in the big-ass office being remodeled. I was working with a guy named Daryl, who I'm guessing was about 10 or so years older. Nice guy. Real nice. Like a lot of people from my family's hometown, a rural Oklahoma community.

He was way more upbeat than I was about doing what were doing: spraying water on the wall, then hand-scraping the wall bare and after a certain amount amassed, hauling the load down the service elevator and tossing it in the rented trash thingamajig. You know what I'm talking about. Looked like a train car. Fuck it.

Daryl had a wife and an infant kid. He invited to me go fishing some time. He apparently liked to fish and had no idea that I usually catch the hook on the back of my neck.

I don't remember if we worked a full week together. Or if it was two weeks. Or if was just four days and I heard the news on Friday. Who knows?

So Daryl died. Asthma. The dust-like fibers in the shit we were tearing off the walls had fucked with his lungs. The morning after a workday, he had an attack. He thought he'd be OK and wouldn't let his wife call 911, so the ambulance wasn't called until too late. It takes at least 30 minutes to get from this farming community to a hospital. He died on the way. I drove across the Red River to go to the funeral. But instead, drove around town and listened to the first three tracks of Temple of the Dog for two hours. Even though it was the first two songs that were about untimely death, it was "Hunger Strike" that got to me. Not sure why.

The whole thing freaked me out a little. Good things happened that summer too. As with every summer. And I've had worse summers. So I don't know why I thought of this.