As I wake up this morning, my sense of loss is even more intense. So, I want to inject a short story here and share with the rest of you a little about Jim with respect to his humor.
On one of my first trips to York, Jim anxiously wanted an update of where I was located with respect to his home. Generally I would stay in Dayton for the night and then leave from there in the morning and arrive in York that afternoon. He would text me, call me, and ask how far away I was and what time I would be leaving the hotel and then say he would see me on the interstate. Mind you, I would be scores of miles ahead of his entrance onto the interstate and I wondered how we would "see" each other on the interstate unless I slowed down to a crawl. Jim arranged when and where we would meet for lunch during the trip knowing that he was many miles behind me and I wondered how long I would have to wait at the restaurant for him to arrive. BOY was I SURPRISED!
Let me first say that I am not light footed on the interstate and generally set the cruise about 5 to 8 miles OVER the speed limit. I learned what many others apparently knew about Jim and that was he was the heavy footed champ when it came to speeding down the interstate! As we got closer to our lunch destination, Jim would check in with regular car to car calls indicating what mile marker he had just passed....holy cow, he was getting closer and closer to me! AND, I might add, rather quickly! This went on for a couple of hours and then in my rear view mirror I saw that big and mighty late model Mercury he loved so much and there he was with that big grin on his face! He had to have been averaging around 100 MPH to catch up with me!
As I saw Jim approach the rear of my car, a PT Cruiser, I wondered how the heck I was going to keep up with that big V-8 which was almost the size of my entire car! Then the phone rang. It was HIM ... He said, I am on your (another word for rear) so lets get going! Follow me he said as that almost 20 foot long car screamed by me like I was backing up! So I pushed the petal to the metal like the little engine that could and did my best to keep up with Jim. I had never gone that fast on the interstate and wondered if this was a wise decision as we sped down the highway. Looking down at the speedometer, I could not believe that my PT could go that fast! Zippity doo dah we went and before much time went by, we had arrived at the lunch destination. We parked and got out of our cars me being a little slower than Jim because it took a while to dislodge my fingers from the steering wheel! Those of you that knew Jim are familiar with his strolling type of walk and so there we were walking into the restaurant with limited conversation as I was trying to get over the warp speed we had just been going. As we sat down at the table, Jim said to me, "That little Cruiser amazed me!" "I can't believe you were able to keep up like you did!" All the while he was smiling and giggling (he had a neat giggle). He then started what became a story he told many times to others about that trip. He would tell about the time when some guy in a PT Cruiser was chasing him down the interstate and was trying to keep up with his Mighty Mercury. "That PT was losing parts as the air friction heated up the metal" he would say. "I could see the fenders and antenna de-materializing" he would remark as everyone at the table was laughing. You see, little did I know that Jim was well known for his heavy foot while driving. Everyone knew that a trip with Jim was going to be interesting and full of fun conversation as he blew the paint off every car he passed! And the story of the trip was going to be a "Jim Barrett Original" with his typical funny comments and facial actions all of which was very animated. We never failed to reminisce about the "Trip To York" and how that crazy guy in the PT was chasing him down the interstate thinking he could keep up with the big bad Mercury. With tears in my eyes right now, I am sure going to miss that big guy.
