"Our heroes are people and people are flawed. Don't let that taint the thing you love." Randy Milholland

I have made mention a time or two of my Uncle who owned the restaurant on Gregory and Prospect. This post is about him. People called him Jimmy Ray, even though Ray isnt his middle name, the restaurant was called Ray's, after his father in law, his name was Jim, but he was so closely associated with the place that people started calling him Ray, and eventually Jimmy Ray.


Jimmy Ray wasn't a big guy in stature, but he was widely respected and well known in the area. Ive seen him let people walk out of his place without paying, not because he was avoiding confrontation, but because he knew they couldn't pay, so he let it go. I think he was trying to let them keep a little dignity, avoiding rubbing salt in the wound, so to speak. The ones who he let skip out on a bill were clearly poor, always on foot, desperate. If it was someone who could pay, drove up to the place, and was just trying to get a freebie, well lets just say , that dog wouldnt hunt. Those guys always ended up paying. Ray's restaurant sat on Gregory and Prospect for better than 25 years, he was robbed just once. Word got back to him who it was, I suspect that guy is still walking funny today. As I mentioned in an earlier post his customer base was a mix of cops, crooks, and regular working class people. He was well liked equally across the board. That gives you an idea of the kind of guy he was.


Jimmy Ray was the first person I ever really admired and wanted to emulate. He was cool in the way Jackie Gleason's portrayal of Minnesota Fats, in The Hustler was cool. He had a way of speaking softly with a rhythm to his words that made you hang on every single syllable. He always wore black clothes that he ordered from some place in New York. His hair was always combed back tight against his skull, never out of place. He wore these black wrap around sunglasses and the only music he listened to was Sinatra or Tony Bennett, occasionally Dean Martin. I know you are probably thinking from the physical description and musical taste, the guy sounds like a gangster. He wasn't, he was an honest guy, but there was probably a time in his early years when he lived on the fringe, could have gone either way, chose an honest path.


For a time, Jimmy Ray was more of a father figure to me than my own Father. He was quick to point out when I was fuckin up, and just as quick to bail me out of a pinch after I failed to listen. In my eyes he was one of those rare guys who are larger than life. I guess you could say he was a hero to me. So where am I going with this? Hang in there , I'm wondering the same thing myself.


In an earlier post, I made reference to my Uncle , Aunt and Cousin being victims of a home invasion in Waldo that occurred last year. Jimmy Ray was that Uncle. He had just come home from the place he owns in Hickman Mills. Some of you may eat or drink there, so you'll know the place without me naming it, if not it doesn't matter. So he is at his front door, fumbling with his keys and a young kid, 16 or so, pulls up on a bike and asks for a cigarette, before he can answer, two more come around the corner of his house, they all have pistols. So did Jimmy Ray. Ten years ago , that incident would have ended differently. The police would have been processing three corpses on a front lawn in Waldo, but Jimmy Ray was about 75 at the time, his son was also standing there, and I think that caused him some hesitation. So they forced them inside rounded up my aunt, pistol whipped Jimmy Ray, broke his Jaw and gave him a concussion. Three kids, wanna be gangstas, spent about 30 or 45 minutes cleaning out a large gun collection and threatening to kill them if they looked up.


Jimmy was already old, but the robbery, the beating and the feeling of helplessness took a pretty heavy toll on him. Jump to about a year later, just last week. Jimmy was going to pick up one of his sons. An ungrateful, spoiled professional drunk and all around douche bag. Said douche bag was doing community service at Longview Farm as part of a sentence for his umpteenth DUI. So Jimmy Ray goes to pick him up and gets lost, for three hours. Its that last sentence that prompted me to write this. To be honest I just sat down with no preconceived idea of what I was going to say, so this is all straight off the cuff, with no conscious forethought or predetermined direction.


Reading back on what I have written up to this point, it dawned on me that Ive been referring to my Uncle in the past tense, a eulogy of sorts. In fact he is still alive and well, or at least as well as someone pushing eighty can be expected to be. But he isn't the same Jimmy Ray I grew up idolizing. He is a tired old man, who keeps getting up everyday, keeps putting one foot in front of the other. He is still a tough guy, just not in the same way he once was. In the nearly 10 years since I made parole and reentered the world, Ive seen my Uncle only a handful of times. It's painful to see him aging, losing a step, then another. Does anyone remember when John Wayne accepted some kind of lifetime achievement award shortly before he died of cancer? I can picture it like I just watched it moments ago. The Duke was thin and drawn, visibly weak, a shell of his former self. He looked afraid and frail. Or one of Muhammad Ali's interviews since Parkinson's took its toll, a guy that once was the greatest athlete and one of the most outspoken, in your face, men of his day, reduced to tremors and a voice that was barely audible. When you see people who were bigger than life beaten down by time and circumstance, it's a hard thing to witness. That's how I feel when I see my Uncle. So I do what I always do in these types of situations, I avoid them, I stay away.


I owe Jimmy Ray more than that, but I doubt I'll do much about it. Not much scares me other than hospitals, divorce lawyers, grand jury's and telling people I care about, how I feel about them. So Im taking the cowards way out and doing it here, where he wont ever see it. It isnt right, it isnt something I can explain, it just IS. I'm not sure why it bothers me as much as it does to see him grow old. Maybe it's a glaring comment on my own fear of growing old. Maybe it's just hard for some of us to watch our Heroes turn old and the realization that even the great ones can't beat time.