My friend, Bob Hawkins

When I started working for the Maine Department of Education in the early 1980’s, one of the first people I met and who befriended me was Bob Hawkins. Bob was in his early 60’s at the time, was small, like me, and had been a boxer in the Marines during WWII. This carried over to the way he would dance his boxer’s footwork down the halls of the office building, and jump his way up stairs as if he were jumping rope, just to show off that he could still do it. He had a puckish sense of humor, which he immediately used to get me into trouble with one of the secretaries.
Early on, I realized that I could tell Bob any joke, no matter how politically incorrect without him being offended, and one Monday, after learning the story of a leper in a bar at an Army Reserve drill, I decided to tell him.
A leper walked into a bar and asked the bartender if he could get a drink. When told yes, he gratefully thanked the man, saying, “I usually upset people, so it’s very nice of you to serve me.”
“No problem,” the barkeep replied, “We serve anyone. It doesn’t matter what you are, everyone is equal here.”
The leper then orders a gin and tonic, and as he raises his glass to drink, he notices the barman, go to the end of the counter and throw up in the trash can. When he returns, the leper orders a second drink, and sees the same thing happen. During the third drink, the poor bartender is retching violently with the dry heaves.
He returns to refill the leper’s glass, wiping his pale face with a towel. “I’m sorry, if my presence here makes you ill,” says the leper. “I’ll leave.”
“Oh no,” replies the embarrassed bartender, “It’s not you. It’s the guy next to you dipping his crackers in your arm.”
Bob nodded, and admitted it was a good story and suggested I tell it to one of the secretaries, an older woman, with children about my age. I demurred at first, but he called her over and said, “Bill, has a story he would like to tell you about a gentleman with Hansen’s disease.” Thus began the incident of the two innocents, she not knowing what Hansen’s disease was, and I not knowing that she was going to be totally grossed out. That was my third day on the job.
On my fourth day, Bob told our boss that we would be going over to the State Office Building to pick up a print order and that I should meet people in the other building. That part was true. What he didn’t tell me was that, as a native of the area, he felt it his duty to show me the old granite quarries nearby in Hallowell, so away we went down old single lane, unplowed roads. It was February, and when we tried to turn around we got stuck and he had to call his brother, a retired Army officer to pull us out. Neither he, nor our boss was particularly thrilled, but I didn’t get fired that day either. I think, Fred, our boss, realized there would be some entertainment value to the two of us.
Bob aspired to be a poet. When threatening rain clouds appeared, he would loudly exclaim that, “Those clouds look juicy.” And from this he came up with a little poem I’ve always remembered:
“Them juicy clouds are full of dew;
The rain is going to fall;
You’ll be needing your umbrella;
It’s a hanging in the hall.”
But the poem he always wanted to write and never finished, started with the memorable line:
“It’s a long, long way, I think, do you?
From Keetmanshoop to Katmandu.”
We struggled over that for months, and although I came up with a second line of:
“And farther still, I understand;
From Singapore to Samarkand.”
We were never able to finish what might have been a great poem.
Bob is gone now, and like with so many of his generation, the world is a little more boring without him.