My old gym pal Robin Martinez was ten years older than me, thus in a prime position to point out the approaching ravages another decade would present. She promised my seventies would be a transitional time when hikes would shorten, ambitions temper and a few plates taken off my leg press machine. All true, but at least I held off til the latter 70s.
The 80s were another thing entirely. “It’s a revelation when you get to be eighty,” she moaned. “Every day when you wake up it’s some other body part in trouble. It’s like you look left and right at the intersection, then a piano falls on your head from above. I have arthritis and a few other ‘itises’ as well. I can’t get down on my knees to wax the kitchen floor. When I do, I can’t get up. My eyes are going on me and I can’t drive at night any more. The other day I fell down, so now I have a big stick. I don’t think I’m gonna get out of this place alive.”
She did, though. Robin made it down the rocky road to Nonagenaria, succumbing to immobility and Michigan at 91. I wonder what she would have said about 90?
One poignant thing Mrs. Martinez left off her list of depressing outcomes is that the 80s are the years the big trees fall---the old friends you’ve prized and relied on for moral support are dropping by the wayside in alarming numbers. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to 90 is littered with friendly corpses, not to mention the also-eligibles sitting in the highway oases waiting for a break in the traffic. Every death is a blow, but some of them are TKOs. Several Mays ago, we had our turn.
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| Stuart & Leslie with Bill at Christmas in Massachusetts |
Stuart Bentler: He Was A Friend Of Mine.
Once upon a time, a University of Florida Architecture Department student named Stuart Bentler stumbled onto the newly-opened Subterranean Circus and said to himself, “This is good!” Despite his straight-arrow appearance and respectable background, Bentler was like a kid in a candy store, shuffling through posters, meandering wide-eyed through the blacklight room, taking note of the hippie girls in tiny halters and diaphanous dresses. Straight-laced architect or not, Stuart was not immune to fun, and this looked like big fun to him. He bought a lid from someone in the parking lot and went off to see what he could see. In a couple of days he was back, inviting us all to his duplex on Fourth Avenue just off Thirteenth, close to campus. He promised he had “more music than anybody,” He did, too.
Stuart had a reel-to-reel setup which allowed him to play any song he wanted almost instantly. He had a lovely wife named Leslie who provided food treats. He had Lite Brite games and luminous electric yoyos and an endless stream of enthusiasm for whatever the psychedelic onslaught offered next. Nervous as he was (and a bit of a control freak), Mr. Bentler proffered one night that he might like to try some LSD. I decided to abstain because rookie acid-takers were notorious for going off the trail and into the wilderness, requiring sober guidance. Good thing, too.
In those days, most of the available acid was aided and abetted by a little speed, so after the user peaked it was miles to go before he’d sleep. Stuart had a wonderful trip to the top of the mountain, but when he got off the ski lift he insisted on immediately retiring to a bed & breakfast. We explained to him why this was impossible, but he kept looking for the shut-off switch. “I think I’m going crazy,” he worried. “Somebody take me to the emergency room!” Nobody volunteered, of course, and it was hours later before he settled down. You’d think the average Joe would take a lesson from the experience, calm down, take baby steps. Not Stuart. Despite his angst, the smitten architect came bounding up the Circus stairs the next day with a giant smile on his face. “That was GREAT!” he said. “I want to do it again!”
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| Stuart with Irana Maiolo in Lauderdale |
Adventures In Bentlerville
Stuart and Leslie got married, moved to Tampa and started a very successful architecture firm. Patty Wheeler, my then-girlfriend and I visited and Stuart insisted on an LSD romp. We wound up somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, playing disembodied heads. You can’t do that with many people. A year later, my pal Art Johnson and I were traveling to Red Sox Spring training games and we wound up in Tampa at midnight to discover a bowling tournament had usurped all the hotel rooms. There are few acquaintances you would wake up under the circumstances, but I knew Stuart wouldn’t mind, and he took it as a lark. “You have amazing friends,” said Art.
And quirky ones. Stuart had friends, but then again he also had “pallbearers,” eight of them, who waxed and waned in his evaluation. These were his best friends at the moment, the ones he wanted there to carry the box at his funeral. One day, I moved up from Triple-A to the big leagues. “I think you’re one of my pallbearers now,” he told me in a rare serious mein. “What are the perks,” I asked. “The pallbearers get first dibs on Leslie,” he said.
The Bentlers had two children, a boy and a girl, perhaps so Stuart would have someone to play with. The boy, alas, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, but won Stuart’s heart. Before Stuart Jr. died in his late teens, he and his father traversed the country on a weeks-long pilgrimage to everywhere in Stuart’s spiffy sports car, keeping an incredibly beautiful journal full of pictures and postcards and handwritten musings on their discoveries. No dinosaur gardens or putt-putt courses were spared. It was the ultimate road trip all of us dream of, but it was also The Last Roundup. Devastated at his beloved son’s death, Stuart Bentler abdicated to Europe for six months. By then, he and Leslie had gone their separate ways.
Stuart visited often on his drives to and from Atlanta, where Leslie had settled. In those days, cocaine was his constant companion, but his true love was alcohol. Once opening his refrigerator, I found nothing but beer and Gatorade. He asked Siobhan and I separately if we thought he was an alcoholic. “Ya THINK?” answered she, in her own inimitable fashion.
We were there for daughter Katherine's spare-no-expense wedding and we got to meet Jan, Stuart’s new inamorata. They moved together to Phoenix, where Stuart had a big new job, then later to Fort Lauderdale, where the partnership ended. Since we were racing horses in Calder almost weekly, there were regular visits to the Bentler digs. In my experience with the dwellings of architects, I have always admired their fixation on neatness and order. The wall photos are always straight and everything is where it belongs. Stuart carried this to anal extremes; the coathangers in his closets were spaced equally apart and his underwear and socks were neatly folded in their separate drawers. Despite his questionable habits, he daily ran on the beach and kept himself fit and attractive. And always good-humored. Stuart was invariably effortlessly funny.
One night, Siobhan and I were waiting for him and a possible new girlfriend, who were arriving separately at a Las Olas restaurant. Exactly one minute past the appointed hour, Stuart, impeccably dressed in sports jacket and his regular fedora, cruised by slowly in his convertible, suave as hell. When he came in and realized his date hadn’t yet shown up, he went back out, circled the block a couple more times and repeated his entrance, this time to an audience of three. I gave him a major eye roll, but he was unmoved. “Presentation is everything,” he said.
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| Stuart Jr. gets a horse ride with Siobhan |
Storm Clouds In The Distance
Stuart called from California one day while tending to a recently deceased aunt’s estate. “I nodded off at a stoplight and bumped into a bread truck,” he confessed. “Shit happens,” I told him, but it seemed odd because Stuart was an impeccable driver.
“That’s not all,” he relayed. “I’ve been having all kinds of trouble. Headaches. High blood pressure. Stomach problems. I’ve seen three different specialists in two weeks. I got a lot of tests. They said everything is fine. The last guy told me to see a psychiatrist. I was on my way when I hit the bread truck. Anyway, I called to ask if something happens to me, can I have my remains spread at your place? I love it there, I always feel at peace. It’s pretty and it’s quiet and you’re not moving anywhere. Whattaya think?”
Jeez. Are we overreacting? “Come on, Stuart, you aren’t dying. Something would have shown up in the testing.” He said that’s what he kept telling himself. The psychiatrist eventually prescribed drugs to get Stuart to relax. They didn’t work. I told him our graveyard was occupied by several animals and Siobhan’s step-father, but there was room for one more. “I’ll be honored to be among them,” he said. I told him to knock it off and check in at the Mayo Clinic. “It’s the NFL of medicine,” I told him.
By the time Stuart Bentler returned to Florida a few weeks later, he was 50 pounds lighter and fading fast. The Mayo doctors diagnosed amyloidosis, which attacks various organs indiscriminately and is virtually always fatal, especially when left undiagnosed for twelve months. Siobhan and I visited one day and Stuart tried his best to regain his usual good humor. “So you’re hinting there could have been wife-swapping, Leslie for Patty Wheeler back in the day?” he wondered, interest piqued. “Not up to me,” I answered, getting a big last laugh from my old pal. “How come nobody told me about it” he bellowed as we sadly marched off down the corridor
Stuart repaired to his home in Fort Lauderdale, nursed by his stricken daughter Katherine, who refused to leave his bedside. Aware of her tenacity, one day he told her he was feeling better and she should return to her place in Phoenix to attend to loose ends before returning. As soon as she left, he stopped eating and drinking. Not long after, the inimitable Stuart Bentler called it a day, passing off to that great Adventureland in the sky and leaving the world a far less hilarious place. He left me his prized electric yoyo.
The Fellowship Of The Hats
It was a magnificent July day in Greater Fairfield when friends and family gathered to pay their respects and bid adieu to Stuart Bentler, cultural icon, father and child in adult’s clothing. Guests poured in from Oregon, California, Arizona and even Boca to recount past experiences and trade Bentler stories. Three large tables were laid out by Katherine, complete with floral enhancements, each containing enormous boxes of photos of the earlier Bentler years and the allies he had accumulated. Tiny children flashed around the perimeter, discovering lizards and screaming their delight at frog encounters. Mules were ridden, friendships renewed, tears and laughter shed. Finally, there was the Ceremony of the Hats.
Stuart Bentler was a hat fancier, had one for every day of the month, a fedora for all occasions. His finest hat, of shiny black leather, was made in Italy by Borsalino and worn only on special days. It was placed on a bed with 50 others by his daughter, and his friends were invited in to choose a hat of their very own. Having first pick, I took the prized Borsalino, which has become a personal friend. Years later, I wore it to my wedding. It’s on my Facebook profile and will be returning to Europe this Summer when we visit Paris. The other headcovers went off to their various destinations.
The event chairs are slowly stacked and the tables assembled and rolled back on the caterer’s truck. The weary children drag after their mothers back to their cars. A few couples linger to look once more over the site of Stuart’s final repose. The Sun lowers in the sky and looks forward to its own interval. A valued life has passed too soon. Stuart Bentler, man of the world, is gone forever. But the hats, the sacred hats, march on.
That’s all, folks….
Feature picture by Peter Kundra
