Lots of them are displayed here and there for a day or two, but it isn’t often that shown as an RIP, a locally legendary name gets this kind of lengthy billing, for well over a week running now … and it persists … on the high sign on the outside wall of the Agave Kitchen, two stories up.
“A legend rests. Eric Raley.”
— Over at another sorta competitor, as hey when one wins they all win, Hudson Tap, the bartender as advertantly I suspect, greeted a new customer who introduced himself as (also) Eric not Erik, note the difference: Hey bro, if it’s with a “c” not a “k” we’re good. —
I met the deceased back in 1990 when first moving to Hudson. His family and mine built houses, both modest in size, one more than the other, a block apart on Cherry Circle in North Hudson. His kids enjoyed coming over on Halloween and taking in my decked out yard, full of small pieces of grisled gear with me on the roof directing traffic, as in ghosts and goblins and other goonies, on long and thick strings, some years significant enough in number to be said to be assorted, and myself being part of the moving assembled mass.
His first wife, Rhonda, was the first massage therapist I would have, at a stylist shop across the way in the village, with several others to follow, for my severe Tourette Syndrome — and she often worked extra hard on my tight muscles. Knuckles fully engaged, as if of brass. Especially on the far side of my knotted legs.
We would all see each other, from time to time, walking or biking or scooting on the street as it looped back toward Fourth Street.
After this being the pattern for several years, there was a brief hiatus to the interaction, but then I started hobnobbing with various friends after work at Dick’s Bar and Grill. I soon met and counted among them Carol Tucker, one of the managers and someone who would later purchase the establishment, and she would later meet, and then marry, Eric Raley.
This time an existing house was to be not built, but bought, in the Hudson Third Street neighborhood. Again, a stone’s throw from a place much more in common.
First, I recall coming in one night, walking directly over to the back horseshoe part of the bar and shooting the breeze with him about hard-rock music (he’d love Dio and Neon Knights, see the above headline, and Carol and I’d also conversed about System of a Down and Chop Suey lyrics if not slaw) and hard-fought pro football. After a couple of minutes Carol politely interrupted as she had something to show me. There was a great big rock and ring on her finger.
It was made known that my presence was not only requested, more than once in the next week, but required, at the eventual wedding service, reception at the old Garfield’s Valley House, and of course the dollar dance.
Later, over a few years and time — through thick and thin and even as such, a discussion right after 9/11 — we drifted apart and went separate ways, but I’m sure all thought of one another on occasion. Then came this October, well after the first one when we met, and Eric Raley passed away.
At roughly the same time as my own father, now living in Milwaukee, who also had worked in the construction business, various facets but especially plumbing, and made it more years, up to his early 90s. His time of rest had come, as his health had deteriorated in varied ways since age 90, and he had been — plumb stuck — in a nursing home.
So I left for Milwaukee to be with my own family, such as mom and brother, the day prior to services for Eric Raley, so I could not be there. But various people remained in my thoughts; I returned to Hudson a week later.
The night before I traveled southeast across Wisconsin, I had ventured into Dick’s. I saw a friend, who conveyed the sad news, which of course I already knew. He said, see you at the services, at O’Connell’s. I did not have the heart to tell him I would not. But there soon was a sign, small but meaningful, positioned on the front window of Dick’s, with condolescences from his Class of ’87.
Once back, I was thinking about Carol and Old School Hudson when walking to the door at the newer version of Our Town, the newest Kwik Trip. I saw longtime bartender Chad just before I grabbed the knob.
I asked how everyone at Dick’s was. Chad is seldom at a loss for words, and on this occasion he had just two that rung out the most:
It sucks.
Then last night, back at the Old Stomping Grounds, I ran into a not looking too much older but now B-Dayed friend Abby, back at Dick’s, and she said also, have you heard, it’s so sad. And sudden, as is suscinctly and sincerely said by so many.
There will be the possibility of more thoughts on local and otherwise-close-to-me and others life and death, but mostly life, on these pages soon.