CUPID AND GRIM REAPER VISIT MUR-VILLE ON SAME DAY

February 15, 2007 by PT Rothschild.

R.I.P. – HERB SESSLER, born on 4/20, died on 2/14

Murrieta,California - I say to my friends back East that California is a crazy place, that’s why I love it. Had anyone ever told me that I would become friends with an old man who was on his last legs, I’d have said ‘no way’. I could not picture myself being in a position to do that, but the Lord works in mysterious ways and he made one Herbert Sessler cross my path. Actually I crossed his, when I rented a room from him a few years back. At that time I had never been around an ‘old’ person outside my family, or seen one as old as Herb outside a nursing home. But Herb was different than old people I had seen before. Herb still had that gleam in his eye, and maybe that was what did it. After I moved in, we kind of sized each other up. He wasn’t looking for sympathy but I was glad to lend him a hand when he needed it. He was a WWII vet and I respected that. Except for a nephew up in Deluz, Herb had no family and only one friend, and he was sketchy.

Herb was a snapshot in time, a typical Playboy reader on a construction level. Herb did concrete and the way he described it with a friend he met who also does concrete, Herb did fine work, old school style. Although I met Herb in his 80th year, he was still spry enough to be fun with and we took him to Pechanga for his night out. There were four of us and he and we all loved it. In the years since then Herb and I would get our yearly free Thanksgiving Day meal (Siggy’s) and Christmas meal (Old Town) on a regular basis. We enjoyed our company together as men, only without the cigars, discussing politics, women, and religion, sometimes in that order. I soon discovered that underneath that body that was like my ’79 Volvo, Herb was still sharp and ‘full of beans’. We watched TV together and he liked a little ‘nip’ in the afternoon. Sometimes he would smoke a little bowl with me, I’d give him a nug of his own to smoke, cause it helped his breathing. And of course, all my stoner friends took notice of Herb being named ‘herb’. When we talked about weed the first time he was clueless as to what and why ‘pot’ was so persecuted, so I gave him the political history lesson, and then we blazed.

Herb was no choir boy. He had enjoyed marijuana once or twice before. He had also been married twice, had children, and lived a senior’s life in the local senior park since his mother lived there before him. Before then he had been a craps dealer in Vegas, once owned several classic cars, even a Vette back in the fifties. In the end, Herb got to meet my world. He met Full Value Entertainment and auditioned some songs he had written for piano. He went to a few shows. He saw the fingerlights and became a part-time salesman for Premiere Innovations. He became my friend and I will miss him, but I celebrate him being in Paradise now with his family and friends. Of course Herb was cool, born on 4/20 and died on St. Valentine’s Day. How cool is that? He always had style.

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