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On The Road to Enlightenment
BIG DAVE

By Rob Jacobs

Dave Rogers was a good friend of mine. I met him in 1989 when he was a client at a halfway house where I worked as a manager on the midnight shift. Dave was an alcoholic and a drug addict like all of the clients and staff, just another guy trying to get his act together.

Dave told me that on his last drunk in Sarasota, Florida he got into a scramble with the cops and they had to cuff him and put him on the ground. When one of the policemen put his foot on Dave's neck to hold him down and "show him," Dave turned his head and licked the bottom of the cop's foot. They didn't know what they had gotten ahold of that night. Dave told the cops at the jail that he had AIDS, so they put him in a private cell. The next day, when they found out he was lying about the AIDS bit, the judge asked him if he thought he was cute, and Dave said, "No sir, I was just drunk." That's when he got sentenced to the halfway house.

When he got out of the rehab, he used to come over to my house and lift weights in the back in the Florida room. I would come home from karate practice and hear him bellowing out in the back as he heaved the weights. Dave was a big handsome dude about 6 foot tall and naturally built like a professional linebacker, big boned and muscular. He grew his hair long and when he wore his shades he looked like a rock star.

When I worked as a hospital orderly on the midnight shift, Dave got a job at a gas station on the corner. I used to come down there on my lunch break and try to scare him by suddenly looming in the window and screaming or pounding on the door while he was half asleep. Never did get him to jump, and we had a lot of talks about our hopes and dreams and about life in general in that gas station.

Dave would call over to the house to speak to my roommate Chris, and if I answered, I would hold the phone to the side and holler, "Hey Chris! Big Dumb Dave is on the phone! Want me to tell him you are gone?" And Chris would holler back, "No! Tell the little fool I'll be right there!" And I would address Dave, who no doubt could have heard this exchange, and say, "Chris would be delighted to speak with you. One moment please." I could hear Dave laughing on the other end of the line.

One time Dave went to an AA meeting in St. Martha's Church, the monthly anniversary meeting where people received medallions to commemorate various lengths of continuing sobriety. Also, many people made speeches at these particular meetings. My roomie Chris had earned a 10-year chip, and I advised Dave that I would be doing a drive-by scream. Dave went around and opened every window at the church, so as to let the smoke out. Recovering alcoholics are notorious smokers and coffee drinkers.

I drove by about twenty minutes into that meeting, rolled down my window and bellowed out "MUTANT!!" at the top of my lungs and kept on driving. I heard later that some guy giving a speech just shut up, everything seemed to stop, and people looked at each other, no doubt wondering who the mutant was. I thought this was hysterical, and drove on down the road to a bookstore laughing all the way. In fact, I thought it was so funny that 1/2 hour later I drove back by the church again and yelled out "GOBSTOPPER!!" as loud as I could. This exclamation begot yet another frozen moment, except for Dave, who fell on the floor laughing.

Dave went to school and became a certified welder and joined the Ironworkers Union. That outfit sent him to some jobs that paid him a lot of money. And while he was working, he accrued vacation pay at about $15 per hour. Boy, I would have liked to have gotten in on that deal. Anyway, Dave's mom lived in Louisiana, and she was pretty sick with cancer, so he started taking jobs up there, in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He would come back to Sarasota between jobs, and go back up to Louisiana a lot.

Up in Baton Rouge he met the love of his life, a Vietnamese lady who had a couple of children. I didn't know much about that lady except that Dave was crazy about her. He moved up to Louisiana for good, coming back to Sarasota just to visit occasionally. He saved his money and bought a convenience store, quitting the Ironworker business, a young man on his true path no doubt.

One night in the summer of 1998, Dave and his wife were on one of the roads around New Orleans when they met a semi head-on. I never heard any of the details of that gory accident except that they were killed instantly by the truck. It was a total wipeout. A lot of people in Sarasota were hit pretty hard by his death, for Dave was a very popular guy, and he was not even 40 years old.

Heck, he was a great guy. Dave pulled himself up by his bootstraps and went from being an oxygen wasting drunk to really making himself into someone special. He had about 10 years sobriety at the time of his death. He always had a kind word for most everyone, and if he didn't have any nice words about someone, he just didn't say anything at all. He touched a lot of hearts with his personality and love, and he emitted the Golden Rule from his aura. I like to think that he completed his mission before he went off planet.

I remember the last time I saw him was on the highways in Sarasota. We were both heading north on U.S. 41, at the junction where that road forks into 41 and 301 North. I looked over and saw Dave in the right lane taking the 301 as I continued left on 41. I honked my horn and waved and he looked at me and smiled and gave me the peace sign. He had long hair and was wearing his shades, looking just like a rock star.

Sleep well, my brother. I'll see you on the other side.

Rob Jacobs grew up in the Eastern hills of Kentucky, in a town called Louisa, population 2000. He has also lived in Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Florida, where he stayed for 15 years, working in the boat building business and teaching karate at China Hand of Sarasota.

Rob quit the boat business in 1995 and entered massage therapy school, receiving his state license and national certification in early 1996. In late 1997, he moved to San Diego, California with his room mate Lisa. Rob and Lisa share a little house set back from the main street, surrounded by trees and flowers. It is here that Rob contemplates the neighborhood wildlife (including the many cats that wander through their yard all day, and the skunk that resides beneath their neighbor's house) as he ponders and pens his entertaining stories.