End of an Era

By Dan O'Brien

I hardly ever watch television but for the last couple decades I’ve been paying a monthly Direct TV bill. I do that because my best, old friend, Erney, had been reduced to watching television most of the time. He was not always that stationary. In fact, when I first met him, back in 1971, he was active in a 100 different pursuits. He was a trap shooter, a fly tier, a gardener, an authority on cactus and bromeliads, a hunter, and a voracious reader. He was also a falconer and that is how we met.

From that starting point we ended up living together for almost 45 years. We started by sharing a house. Then, when he began to work for me on the ranch, we built a little cabin so he could have his own space. When we moved to our present ranch, he wanted to duplicate his cabin so we built an apartment in one of the out buildings. It was so close to what he was used to that we still called it his cabin.

He didn’t have a television until 20 years ago, when his eyes started to fail; and because he no longer had any income, I put his television in my name. As he aged, his duties contracted to feeding the kennel dogs and the falcons. He still got out enough to hunt for agates but, after he had his stroke, he became glued to the television set. Without the exercise, an old leg injury began to bother him and soon he wasn’t doing much more that sitting in his Lazy Boy chair. I took over his dog and falcon chores and I reveled in the predawn walk out to his little cabin beside the kennels and the falcon chambers. I enjoyed the chores and the few minutes of talking with Erney even though Andy Griffith, Lawrence Welk, or the Golden Girls chattered in the background.

I’m an early riser but it was not until last fall that I began to catch Erney still in bed. Sometimes the television did not come on until seven or even eight o’clock. Our talks became more strained as his hearing faded and the volume of the television went up. I came to resent that television set as if it was stealing my old friend.

Things have changed but I’ve continued doing the chores all this winter and sometimes I forget that Erney no longer inhabits that little cabin. I forget that he is now in a nursing home. The dogs and falcons still greet me with wild barking and wing flapping but the familiar sounds of the theme songs of I Love Lucy and The Mary Tyler Moore Show are not to be heard. When I open the door of Erney’s cabin his very old dog, Al, staggers to his feet and looks hopeful as if Erney might be right behind me. Every night he insists on going back into the cabin for the night. I look around at the simple decorating of a lifelong bachelor: pictures cut from magazines and stapled to the walls, prints of animals and birds, and the auction notice that always stops me in my tracks. It is the sale bill from 1941 when Erney was a year old and his mother sold off everything on the farm after his father died at 45-years old. Some of the sale items have stuck in my head: nine head of horses, a sixteen-inch sulky plow, a kitchen range, and one chicken brooder. In the center of the room the old Lazy Boy sags with Erney’s imprint. The television is black and lifeless.

A few days before Christmas I got out to the cabin around six o’clock in the morning. That time of year it is still dark and I was not surprised that the television was not blaring from within. I went ahead with my chores and, as an afterthought, looked in on Erney. He was laying flat on his back on the concrete floor. He looked up at me and moaned, ”Dan.”

He had fallen the night before and laid on the floor until I found him. When I tried to help him up, it hurt too much and so I called Colton who was out doing his chores. Together we got him up and into his chair. I asked if he wanted the television on and he grimaced, “Yes.”

He did not want to go to the hospital and no amount of reasoning would change his mind. He said that he’d just sit there until he felt better. He sat in that chair for two entire days before he finally admitted that he should probably go to the hospital. When Colton and I tried to get him up and into the pickup, he howled in pain. In his day, Erney was as tough as they’d come. He could work all day in subzero temperatures, sleep in a worn-out sleeping bag on the bare pickup box, and be up the next morning at four-thirty to do it again. I was there when his glove got caught in the power takeoff of a tractor and twisted his right thumb off. He wrapped it tight in the mangled glove and drove himself to the hospital. When he returned with only one thumb, he was back at work after a couple weeks. But he could not stand the pain of us trying to move him. This time he would not be coming back. He had broken his hip.

Yesterday I called to cancel our Direct TV account and they said they would turn us off on Tuesday. This morning I went out to do the chores as usual. I let all five dogs out and walked with them for a couple miles. When we returned, I fed them, then the pigeons, and finally the falcons. The last thing I did was let Al back into Erney’s empty cabin. I looked one more time at the interior and recalled the comradery that I had enjoyed there. Al settled onto his dog bed as he has done for 11 years and my eyes fell on Erney’s old chair with the television remote on the side table. I couldn’t resist. I sat down and pushed the button. Gunsmoke was just coming on and I watched the whole thing.