Day Nine - A Lonely Phone Rings

I like to work late, and sleep in. My wife, Carolyn, likes to get up early. A few months ago she woke before I did, like usual, and opened the shades, saying, "Let the sun shine in". In my half sleep I instantly remembered a radio commercial that played on a little radio station, where I then lived, in Newport, NH . The jingle belonged to a Baptist church in town where a friends' Dad was the minister. Their jingle seemed to play all the time, saying at the end of the spot, "Let the Son, S-O-N, shine in!"
I hadn't thought about my friend Matt Floge in years. He was a great trumpet player, especially for his age. We were both in the school band, but I knew that he had an instinctual talent where I had to really work at it.

It must have been around 6th grade when we first met. Matt was just how you would guess a young preachers son to be, clean cut and straight laced but with a devilish side to him as well. I was a little more out there and I think that made his parents a bit nervous. I dressed more punk-like, and for a small town in NH that seemed to be a big deal to some people.
We rode bikes around, he told me about the bodies in the church basement waiting for funerals, we did kid-like things and tried not to get beat up or threatened by the older bullies with nothing but time on their hands.

I woke up from my memories and went to the computer to do a search for Matt. I was shortly directed to a few different boating websites. There he was in a photo, Matt Floge, sitting there with the same boyish face, same messy black hair, eating crawfish. He came up again at another boat site that looked a little more legit then the first site so I dropped them an email asking if Matt was still around. The owner was quite nice and told me that Matt had indeed worked there and that he had built a house in a nearby town. I'd gone this far so I looked up his name and number.

207-236-6131. I gave it a call and all it did was ring. A few weeks later a called it again, it just rang. I put it in my cell phone memory, where it sits until I think to give it a try, and still it just rings. It's a nice ring. I picture it in an almost empty cabin at he end of a long, muddy dirt road surrounded by tall, swaying pines. The birds sing and a few wild animals slowly forage around for food, but inside it is still, and very silent. The phone rings and for a few minutes it is the only life that that cabin knows. Maybe Matt is out in a boat, a big old clipper kind of boat where there is no phone for months at a time. Now I like to call his number to remember that some things take longer than others to change. In some parts of the world time is running at a different speed and it is reassuring to call Matt, and to be reminded.