One year Solometo sent a holiday card to my old address. I was in my late-30s. Think it was ‘98 or ‘99. Long after I knew him. Shoot, I was in his class back in ‘82. Guess he'd kept our addresses from back then. My dad forwarded the card. I'd moved to Chicago by then, working for this butcher, making deliveries, mostly in Illinois and up the shoreline to Wisconsin.
The card came and I was like, “Oh, shit! Solometo!” There was this collage of pictures on the front. A stunning view from near the top of the Andes. Caption: Bolivia. Tropical fish near the Great Barrier Reef. Caption: Cairns, Australia. A summer sunrise from a mountain in Eastern Siberia. An abandoned, rusted out warehouse. Labeled "Toledo." A train station bench, lit by an old fashioned lamp at night. Caption: Santa Fe. No pictures of himself. Places he'd apparently been that year.
On the back of the card: “Another year wandering this beautiful planet. We can't escape pain, but we can keep moving. Peace, Solometo.”
I wondered how old he must’ve been then. I remember his 40th birthday came during that winter. He told us he'd called his father for the first time in years. Found out his father was married again and had a brain tumor. Wrote it all on the board and told us to ask him questions. It was a whole back-and-forth. Students asking questions about his childhood and his father. Solometo writing on that board with that scratchy chalk. How he’d been born in Nebraska, but bounced around the Midwest throughout his early years. Iowa. Kansas. Minnesota. Said he went to high school in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Said it was all rancher’s kids and native folks. Horses and rifles and cowboy boots. His dad had been an insurance salesman. Was gone half the month, trying to sign people up all over the Great Plains.
Guess Solometo must’ve been almost 60 that year the card arrived. I thought about trying to contact him then. The card was stamped "Santa Fe, New Mexico." Two of my old buddies, Rico and Luke, they got the card, too. Figured Solometo had sent it to a bunch of us. I wondered if he'd sent it to all of his classes. It was creepy to think he'd kept all the student addresses from back then. Maybe just our class. Maybe that year we had as big an impression on him as he had on us.
I mostly hated living in Chicago, except for the Cubs games in the summer. Especially that summer of ’98 when Sosa was hitting moon shots out of Wrigley. Finished with 66 homers, though we know the steroids helped. I had a shitty apartment. The place was loud, close to the L train, on the edge of Hyde Park. Liked the bodegas. The egg sandwiches. Mostly university kids over there. All glasses and calculators. Future engineers and mathematicians. I’d been driving for years then. Usually a couple of hours in the morning, then helping out at the factory in the afternoons. It wasn’t glorious work. I was in a grunge band for a while. We weren’t any good. Wanted to be like Soundgarden, but we didn’t have Chris Cornell. Played a couple of dirty shows.
Anyway, I talked to Luke one time a while later, maybe a year or two, and he’d seen Solometo. Was at a circus show in Phoenix with his two kids. Luke moved out to the desert for college. Studied film. Stayed over there, shooting commercials and helping on an occasional show. He called me one night. He goes, “Guess who I just saw?” It was Solometo, waiting in line for a beer. Just after the trapeze act and before the juggling clown on a unicycle. Luke had gone for a beer and there he was, standing behind Solometo. Because Solometo barely spoke out loud, they’d gone over to a table, sat down together, and written back and forth on a notepad. Maybe 30 minutes. Luke couldn’t remember all the details. I asked Luke if he still had the notepad, but he couldn’t find it.
Can you believe that shit? Solometo just showed up at the circus? I wish I’d had his number. Or his email. Remember, this was just after 2000. Before we all had phones. Luke never could find that notebook. But that wasn’t the last we heard of Solometo.
