Dignified Doorman

The Dignified Doorman In the thirties when fish factories in my town closed, the sardines didn’t swim near shore, they swam further into deep the ocean. Perhaps collective memory told them not to go near the coastline. Like the war, it was forgotten when old sardines died out and the new generation swam too close to shore again, but that was after my two uncles had gone to America to find work. In New York one of them, a young man with an immense dignity got a temporary job as a doorman at a swanky hotel, but he stayed the uniform was smart and the ladies were very kind to him, free food and lodging. After twenty years, he came back home and bought a house, cash, of tips given to him by hotel’s clients and he got married which was expected of a man with greying hair and a fairly new bungalow. In the meantime, there had been a war and he got a job as a driver for the boss of a brewery a job he kept till he retired. A placid man, more than Domingo, his wife had affairs in the hope of shaking him out of his placidity he turned the other cheek. Talking about cheeks when his wife died he moved in with his friend and both of them lived to be old men, who had found love, if a bit late in life.