Bobby Reynolds is alive and (relatively) well!
After the re-publication, three days ago, of Flashback Number Three, Hey Buddy, Can you Spare Some Change? from my archive of pre-Internet reporting, the Facebook response was poignant. Portlanders of a certain era reminisced and remembered their own encounters with Bobby Reynolds. (Over here, though, with the unsentimental consumers of The Crash Report, there were lots of reads but zero engagement.)
A well-placed source — touched by the Facebook commentary about Bobby — reached out to tell me that Bobby is alive and resides in the Barron Center, the city-run nursing home in Portland. My source explained that Bobby now exists in a world dramatically different from life on the street. The beloved dude spends his days in his recliner, watching tv, blissfully unaware of modernity. My source says, “Bobby wouldn’t know what to do with a cell phone, let alone a smart phone.”
I’ve got a million Bobby Reynold stories, btw, but the tale currently stuck in my craw took place just before the turn of the century…
Hey Buddy, can you spare a CD?
It was a little after five p.m. and I was headed down to the Old Port for free Happy Hour pizza and a couple two dollar pints when I bumped into Bobby near Post Office Park, stumbling and staggering, carrying a plastic Shop N Save bag full of compact discs.
“Bobby,” I said, “what the hell are you doing with all those CDs?
“Guy gave to me,” he slurred and mumbled. “Said I could sell ‘em for $20.”
“Do you know what those are?” I asked.
“Noooooo,” he replied, not caring, just believing he’d hit the jackpot.
There was NO WAY Bobby would be able to make a deal at Bull Moose Music. First, he was drunk. Two, he was staggering. Three, thanks to his brain injury and the booze, he was no condition to be negotiating the sale of anything, let alone of a bunch of CDs.
Bobby didn’t know what CDs were, btw, because his understanding of music technology was limited to radio, cassettes and 8-tracks, the song delivery systems of his life before the accident in 1979, when he was run down on the side of the road and left for dead, resulting in severe damage to his brain.
I told him to wait on a park bench and I’d go sell the damn things.
So I walked to Bull Moose and plopped ‘em down on the counter where you sell used CDs. Clerk came by, gave ‘em a quick look-see, and said, “some guy just brought these in and tried to sell ‘em. I told him they were of zero value. All of ‘em are scratched. Look.”
He opened a couple CD cases to demonstrate his point.
Arg.
So now Bobby was waiting in Post Office Park, thinking he’d won the lottery. And I was wondering how the hell I was gonna explain that the CDs were scratched and worthless. BECAUSE HE COULDN’T EVEN COMPREHEND WHAT THEY WERE!
So despite being pretty close to broke, I took a twenty out of the ATM and passed it along to my drunken buddy. He was pumped and now I owned the Shop-N-Save bag full of worthless CDs. Which, eventually, I ended up tossing. All except a copy of American Beauty by the Grateful Dead which still remains in my neglected CD collection.
All that to say, if Bobby Reynolds didn’t understand CDs back then, his mind definitely couldn’t handle today’s Facebook posts and comments or the latest Crash Report.
As for Bobby and his distinctive gait, my source says it’s still “scary as hell to watch him walk.”
According to my math, Bobby Reynolds is now 66 years of age. To me, it’s amazing that my old pal is still alive. After all, way back in 1995, a Portland paramedic predicted that he only had “four or five years” left. Perhaps it was all Bobby’s stagger, stumble and fall cardio that allowed him to survive for so many years.
Or, maybe, he still exists on the Earthly plane because he was fortuitously caught by the municipal safety net. Now, for almost the last decade, he’s lived in a place staffed by caring nurses and attendants. Where his needs are met and he doesn’t have to walk very far.
Also, I wanted to mention that two of Bobby's relatives reached out to me after the OG story was originally published in 1995. (I’m searching the archives for the follow-up, but still haven’t found it via the paper-to-digital collection at the Portland Public Library.) Bobby’s kin wanted to talk. We went for a cup of tea and they explained how they'd been trying to help him for years. His brain injury, though, made it impossible for anyone to have a lasting impact. Which was so very sad because, clearly, his family loved him.
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