Another Bird Story, Mr. Sidney Amber Young man! Young man, dammit, I said young man! And then there was a whacking of a cane upon my floor. I turned from my chores and at the door I saw an ancient man and an ancient woman. We want to buy a parakeet! Im a hundred and one years old-- we dont have much time! Please pay attention! He won my attention, he won it all and everything I ever wished to do in this life at this moment was to attend him. Everything else evaporated. The situation was so unexpected and delightful that I all but melted into a puddle. We could have chosen the green one with the white wings or the chesty blue one with the perfectly spotted necklace or the pink-eyed Albino. His name was Sidney he said, Sidney Amber, we live at the Broadmoor. And the Ambers would show up in their De Soto cab a couple of times a month to buy bird seed or a two dollar toy. I always opened a folding chair for them but neither one ever chose to sit in it. And we would just sometimes talk about anything. They were both talking machines and they had a contagious humor about them. Once we were talking about thoroughbred horses so I went off on one of my gambling stories. I did not know that Mr. Amber had gotten dangerously frisky with the ponies when he was younger. It had cost him a house and serious amounts of money. Mrs. Amber squeezed and shook my wrist. Listen Here, Ron, youll find a lot more horses asses at a race track than you will find horses! Right Sidney? Mr. Amber passed away in 1995 at the age of a hundred nine. One of the De Soto cabbies stopped in to tell me. The next day in the papers his obituaries seemed to be every place from Los Angeles to New York. There was a video casette someone gave me of Mr. Amber on the Tonight Show. The colummnist, Herb Caen recounted his first visit with Sidney at the Broadmoor. A weary old man bent over a walking stick and greeted him at the door, shuffled a few pitiful steps, then turned and threw his cane on the bed, AH! FOOLED YOU, DIDNT I!
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 23:51:06 +0000
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