Or the lack thereof. Our teeth have their own cycle of life… they come in, fall out, come back bigger and better, and finally fall out never to return. I found it ironic that Kaila lost the tooth that makes her look toothless… her other front tooth… in Lake Havasu because I’m seriously thinking that the average age of the town is somewhat over eighty. And that’s not a criticism… it’s merely an observation. As far as we know gettin’ old beats the alternative and it’s not like any of us has a choice.

While we’re on the subject of teeth… we were camped just a few miles south of Havasu at Cattail Cove State Park. Our neighbor was a very kind, very generous fellow named Gary. He was a large, barrel bellied, heavily bearded man, about 6’2″ in height, with one very badly bent wheel that he kept haphazardly wrapped in a fraying – stained ace bandage. Believe it or not… he was eighty-four years old and still out camping by himself in a mid seventies chevy pick-up and an even older faded silver weekender camper. In short, Gary was a TOTAL character who by my count had no more than five teeth left in his head.

On Sunday the park offered a free ice cream social. Our kids have NEVER said no to free ice cream… I doubt any in the history of kid-dom have… so down we went with our bowls and spoons in hand to collect a heapin helpin of free ice cream. As we were enjoying the fruits of our walk Gary came over to join us with an overflowing bowl that was already melting over it’s side and onto his hands. “It takes me too long to walk around, so I get my firsts and seconds and thirds all at the same time.” Was his explanation. Made perfect sense to me.

And so there we sat enjoying our ice cream and Gary’s tales. And the tales were abundant… from his birth in Alameda in the early 1930’s to his service in Korea to his multiple businesses and even more multiple wives to the wrongs of the world… we got it all… or at least a lot of it. Then he mentioned that earlier in the day he’d commissioned someone in Parker to smoke some ribs for him… and that gave me cause to imagine the interior layout of his teeth… pondering the logistics of his actually eating ribs and finally settling on the scenario of the meat being cut off the bone… like cutting the corn off of a cob which is what Kaila has to do now. Licking the ice cream off of his hands and fingers he excused himself to go and collect his ribs, promising as he left to donate the rib remnants to our dogs.

A few hours later he came barreling into camp and moments later he called me over and handed me some bones wrapped in foil. I thanked him and took them to the dogs. I’m telling you they get so many treats everywhere we go… they’ve never had it so good. Some minutes later as the dogs were eviscerating their gift. We heard a VERY loud expletive from Gary’s camper… after a brief silence he called me over. The door was open and standing there facing me… surrounded by the piles of his belongings was Gary… dressed only in his underpants. He handed me the rest of his ribs. His beard was heavily covered in BBQ sauce and there was a bit of rib meat hanging from his one front tooth. “Can you pull some of this goddamned meat off of the bones for me?” “I just about ripped out one of my good teeth tryin to eat em and I can’t see well enough to get all the damn meat off.” What did I do? What could I do? I first turned the other way… and then cut the meat off of the ribs for him. And he thanked me… despite my protestations… with at least a half slab of rather good ribs.

And that I’m afraid is how I shall always remember Lake Havasu.