Don't Lose Your Dreams (standard:drama, 2924 words)
Author: hvysmker	Added: Sep 11 2004	Views/Reads: 3628/2429	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The importance of dreams in a man's life

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

door before tiptoeing to the front door to let the Officer in. 

“I'm Officer Johnson, Son.”  The uniformed policeman informed him
officiously.  “Can I have a look at the problem?”  All Terry noticed, 
through his now flowing tears, was the sad eyes and big gun on the 
uniformed fat man.  It took the boy a few seconds to recognize his 
Grandfather was the ‘problem' referred to. 

He stepped aside and followed the man into the living room.  The
policeman first walked around the body and chair, noting the scene.  
The old man was obviously dead but he reached down and felt for a pulse 
to make sure.  Following procedure, the Deputy had to consider it a 
Homicide until proven otherwise and not screw up the scene. 

“Sorry Son, why don't you come into the kitchen with me and sit down. 
You can't do anything for him in here.” 

“I...is he....Is he, you know, gone, Sir?”  Terry managed to get out,
refusing to take his eyes off the body. 

“I'm afraid so, Son.  Come on, I'll make you some cocoa or something. 
You're a big boy, maybe even a cup of coffee?”  He steered Terry to the 
kitchen, keying his portable radio to send for an ambulance and 
emergency equipment, setting the process in motion. 

While waiting Officer Johnson looked in cupboards and found a jar of
instant coffee, no cocoa or tea in sight. 

“You want a cup, I could sure use one myself?”  Seeing a tea kettle on
the stove, he turned it on and looked for cups.  “I knew the old man 
myself, Boy.  What's your name anyway, I don't want to keep calling you 
boy?” 

“Terry, Terry Adams, Sir.”  Terry, making an effort, wiped his nose and
tried to stop the tears.  Looking up he saw the familiar plaque over 
the stove.  “Always live your Dreams.”  It said.  Funny he noticed it 
at a time like that, he thought, like Grandpa giving him a final 
reminder. 

“My name's Sam, Sam Johnson, you can call me Sam, no more of that Sir
shit, ok?”  Sam stirred coffee into two cups, not seeing any cream or 
sugar around.  “Real men drink it black.”  He smiled and put a cup in 
front of Terry. 

“Yeh, I used to buy cars off him when I was young, S..Terry.  You know
he used to have a new car dealership when I was a kid.  I hear he bet 
it on a ball game, and lost.  He was crazy in those days, in a nice way 
of course, probably never hurt anyone in his life.  But a dreamer, a 
real dreamer.  Funny though, not a habitual gambler, except with life.” 
 Sam laughed loudly, “The guy just didn't give a shit.  He'd work his 
ass off, building a fortune, lose it on a whim, and go into another, 
different field, then do the same thing.  To him the important thing 
was the dream, and working to make it real.  After that he just went on 
to the next dream.”  Sam had seen the plaque. 

There was a knock on the front door. Sam got up, gulping his coffee. 

“You just sit here, Terry.  I'll be back later.  A lot of people will be
in there working for a while.  Do you want me to call your parents, or 
do it yourself?  You know the number, don't you?”  He left to let the 
others in.  Terry went over to the phone by the sink to call his 
parents.  Sam came in later and asked Terry how he had found his 
Grandpa, writing it all down.  Then Terry's parents came and took him 
home. 

**** 

The old man was buried and forgotten.  Some other older relatives moved
into the old house, and life went on.  With his Grandpa gone, the place 
wasn't the same and Terry rarely visited his safe haven.  He had other 
things to think about, such as school and growing up.  But he still had 
dreams and remembered the old man's advice. 

“Terry, pay attention,” his math teacher would implore, “You'll never
amount to anything sitting there daydreaming.”  He figured he didn't 
need all that math.  He would probably just get a good paying factory 
job, like most of his family, settle down and have a half dozen kids.  
What good was higher mathematics to him? 

Sonja, one of the prettiest girls in the school had a crush on Terry,
but he was too busy to notice.  She was a cheerleader, but also too 
intelligent to care for the musclebound jocks she associated with.  She 
wanted stability in life, not the flash of teenage muscle and 
adolescent hormones. 

“Terry, I have time to help you with your math tonight, if you want that
is.”  After a shared math class and noticing his inattention. 

“Na, I gotta job stocking shelves over at Saveway Groceries tonight.  I
won't be done till midnight.”  He was too busy to mess around with 
girls, or that damn math. 

His first job was as a short order cook.  Liking to experiment with
spices and methods, he both became a good cook and was fired from his 
job. 

“Terry, in the restaurant business we strive for consistency, not
innovation.  Our customers come in here because they like our 
hamburgers, and want them to look and taste the same every day.”  His 
boss complained.  “With you, they never know what to expect.  Maybe it 
would be better if you tried somewhere else.” 

“I understand, Jerry.  I'll try to keep it under control.” 

“You don't understand young man.  I insist.” 

Fine, Terry went to the local community college which had a cooking
course.  He emerged a very good cook and easily got a job as a 
beginning chef.  He was still not satisfied.  Terry had to work under a 
more experienced chef, and soon found he was still not only second, but 
third chicken in the pecking order.  Sure, the work was more complex, 
but he still had to follow someone else's dictates. 

“Terry, I told you not to put so much Garlic in the spaghetti sauce. 
Why can't you follow orders?  And, all that parsely you used for 
garnish.  That stuff costs money you know, we have a budget.” There 
went one dream, so he followed another.  He loved automobiles and got a 
job at a repair shop.  Putting all his efforts into the job, to the 
exclusion of anything else like women or leisure, he became the best 
worker in the shop.  If you gave Terry a transmission to repair he 
worked day and night on it, sleeping on a cot in back of the room and 
rarely even taking time to gulp down a sandwich.  Again he was asked to 
take his efforts elsewhere. 

“Sorry Terry, but you're just not a team player.  The longer we keep a
vehicle here, the more we get paid.  It's just not cost efficient to 
work the way you do.  If you can't slow down, I think you should look 
for other work.”  Which he did, he couldn't slow down and lost another 
dream. 

The computer age came along while he was in his late twenties.  Huge
mainframe computers dominated the landscape, news media, and an 
expanding number of businesses.  Terry returned to school.  Even most 
colleges didn't have computer courses at that early date.  He paid to 
go to one of the first trade schools to learn computer programming, 
getting in on the ground floor. 

“You're hired Mr. Adams, We have this big, million dollar machine and
the only person to understand it just quit.” 

Again, Terry immersed himself in his work, learning all the intricacies
of that particular make and model.  But he found himself handicapped.  
He didn't understand the mathematical concepts of the job.  It was an 
Engineering company and needed complex mathematical programs to solve 
such problems.  Terry wished he had taken and paid attention to those 
math courses in high school. 

“Sorry, Adams, but we can't afford two programmers here, we're too small
a company.  We'll give you good references for effort, of course.”  And 
he had another dream shattered. 

Terry had about run out of dreams.  Sitting in his lonely rented room in
the big city, he took an honest look at himself.  Over forty years old, 
Only been in love one time and screwed that up, lonely, and he was 
again out of work.  What had dreaming gotten him?  The same as that old 
fool, old and broke, he thought, taking another drink from a quart of 
cheap vodka. 

He had lost his dreams, replacing them with shot glasses.  A few days
later he found that his old skills at auto repair were just that, old.  
Technology had passed him by in that field, and he was too tired to go 
back to school.  Besides, it would cut into his drinking time. 

“Yeah, Buddy, we can use another cook/dishwasher.  Ya' gotta alternate
with old Johnny there.  You cook one day and wash dishes the next, OK, 
Jack?” 

“Yessir.”  He had lost his pizzaz, going through the motions, just to
get home to his bottle.  Terry found little solace in the bar girls, 
considering them just losers like him.  He preferred to just drink 
alone in front of the television. 

His drinking went on for another ten years.  Finally he managed to quit.
 With the absence of drink came a resurgence of dreams.  He found out 
that the old house was now vacant, most of his relatives having left 
his little home town and having no use for it.  They were paying taxes 
on the property out of habit, and not wanting to lose the historical 
homestead. 

“Sure, you can move in if you want, no skin off my ass.”  Terry's older
brother told him.  “Your turn to pay the taxes anyway.”  Terry quit his 
dishwasher job and returned to the small town, and the old house. 

**** 

It was a bright sunny day, the day he moved into the old house.  It
looked much different, the grass over a foot high in the front yard.  
Being enclosed by the rickety wooden fence and thus sheltered from the 
street, the town council had ignored the condition of the property. 

It looked ancient to Terry as he walked up the steps to the front porch.
 He gingerly stepped across the porch, finding a couple of boards 
broken.  The front door squeaked on rusty hinges as he opened it. 

The front hall was empty of furniture, loose newspapers and soft drink
cans spotted along it.  Terry continued into the living room which was 
furnished by a mixture of the old furniture from his youth and that 
left by a half dozen later tenants.  The kitchen was the same, with the 
addition of a small microwave oven.  He found his Grandpa's old coffee 
maker in the back of an otherwise bare cupboard, and got it out. 

Terry had food supplies in his old car in the driveway, and went to get
them.  Wanting a cup of coffee before facing the daunting task of 
cleaning the place up, he plugged in the coffee pot, only to find no 
electricity. 

A little searching found the main power switch and water valve.  A call
to the appropriate agencies got both services.  Of course the telephone 
had also been cut off, but he had a cell phone with him. 

Finally, after three hours getting it ready, he had his cup of coffee,
black for men, like the Deputy told him as a kid.  His eyes cruised the 
room, lighting on the plaque which still hung on the dirty wall.  
“Always live your Dreams.”  It told him.  For some reason he couldn't 
take his eyes off it.  He remembered his life, and his Grandpa's.  How 
they had both spend lifetimes striving for success, and ended up here, 
in this house.  Where they had gotten started. 

Terry finished his coffee, wiping moist eyes with the sleeve of his old
print shirt.  On a whim he looked out of the kitchen window, at the old 
Buckeye tree, still standing sentinel in a field of grass.  At least 
that tree had changed little in the intervening years, he thought. 

While he watched he thought he saw some movement under the tree.  Was he
imagining it?  Terry watched and, maybe five minutes later, saw a flash 
of white under the tree.  Someone was under there, a trespasser? 

“I guess I should check it out.”  He mumbled to himself, getting up. 
After all it was his home now.  Terry went out the kitchen door and 
ambled toward the familiar tree, picking up a rusty pick from a pile of 
tools beside the back porch, just in case. 

He found her under the tree, sitting braced against the trunk reading
one of His books, the breadbox under the roots open. 

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”  Terry asked in a gruff
voice.  It was a woman about his age. 

“Sorry Mister.  I come here every once in a while.  It reminds me of an
someone I used to know, who talked about this tree, and how it was his 
dream tree.”  She told him, rising.  “If I'm in your way I'll leave.  I 
don't want any trouble, it's just...just that it's become my dream tree 
too.”  She looked closer at him, raising her reading glasses.  “Terry?  
Is it you?” 

“Son..Sonya?”  They melded into each other as though by divine design,
neither one giving a thought to convention or propriety.  Terry's mind 
going back to an old man saying, “Remember Son, always follow your 
dreams, whatever else in life, always follow your dreams and you'll 
come out right in the end.”


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