He may have been 78 years old but he was in full control of his faculties. No one really argued that he wasn't. He still beat his son in law at tennis, still was listened to with respect when the usual gang met for coffee at McDonalds every morning.
So why did he do it? Why did he hurl a golf ball through the wind shield of an s.u.v. on 132nd that grey afternoon?
He picked the wrong s.u.v. It was driven by a litigious and angry young real estate salesman. Not only did he press charges, he followed up with a civil suit. The indignant driver mistakenly smelled money.
The old man ended up paying damages and getting counseling. Once a week he went down town to an office twelve floors up, over looking the river. The counselor was a woman with a hungry face and earth tone clothes, a little floaty to conceal her figure.
She asked him questions, let him talk. Wrote down a lot of stuff in a note book with a hand made paper cover.
``Dry cleaners,'' she wrote as he talked of his boyhood.
The journey to California as a child. Life in the hop fields of Oregon.
``Dog food,'' she wrote as he spoke of the little new house at Vanport when his father got a job at the shipyards during the war. He was gone then. Surviving the beaches of Normandy. Coming home to find Vanport gone - washed away.
``Kevin, dentist.''
But he had a truck and they were building freeways. He hauled crushed rock and more crushed rock, and he bought more trucks and hauled more rock and he made a lot of money and he married and divorced and he lost a lot of money.
``Deprived,'' the counselor wrote.
He went to L.A. and became a newspaper reporter. Met some movie stars and married a girl who made it small in a couple of movies. They had a nice house and great kids. Then he got lost off roading in Baja. Got picked up by the Mexican Army who couldn't decide whether he was a guerrilla or a drug smuggler or both. It took a couple of years to get out and by then his money and family had disappeared.
``Restless,'' wrote the counselor, then ``lawn.''
He hit the road then, and joined the Mormons in a small Arizona town. He collected two wives. A mother and daughter with seven kids between them that soon became eleven. It was a good time, he said, but they divorced him and moved on.
``Manicure. Card for Erin.''
He was tired by then. He went out to the desert and wrote a novel but he never tried to get it published.
``Failure,'' she wrote. This was his last visit.
``So why did you throw the golf ball?'' she asked.
``Seems like every thing was just too calm,'' he answered.