Yoseph the Cyclist

One early-70's Staff was Yoseph Talon. While Sugar Loaf prided itself on team playing and denigrated the independent thinker --- actually fired them --- Yoseph got along wellat work.Only in his personal life did his eccentric behavior see its full glory.

Mr. Talon insisted that his surname was not pronounced Talon like the claw but Tal-own with a French accent. Needless to say, the man was fiercely Franko from tette to orteil. And what sent him half-way to Paris was when someone called him Joe. (Not even Yo, he commiserated.) Yoseph, you see, was a paradox. On the one hand he was a highly sensitive and caring counselor, but on the other he was a callous patriot.

Before being hired at Sugar Loaf, Yoseph had spent a career as a Clinical Psychologist at a major university. He'd been regionally famous for his compassionate and understanding nature, always going the extra mile, ALWAYS the full nine yards, to help a client regain his equilibrium. When I knew Yoseph he was sixty-four. He hadn't burned himself out but he was well aware that if he piled too many straws on , the next could break his back. So he paced himself carefully. This was a lifelong achievement, for even an insensitive soul could see that the man was a walking volcano who could erupt into arm-waving passion with ease. But now, in his early Autumn years, he was well under control. The way he dealt with problems now was to ignore them.

But he couldn't ignore the fact that he was poor. How did this

controlled man become impoverished? Impetuously, when he left the university, he cashed in his retirement fund, pension plan, and even Social Security. He gave free reign to his emotions by manifesting his greatest dream: buying a fifty-foot sailboat and circumnavigating the globe. Independent to his very marrow, the man headed across the North Atlantic solo, destination France. What his passion had overlooked was that his sleek vessel, well equipped for such a voyage, was more than a one-man vessel. When things got rough as they can in those cold seas, the ship went down. Only because of his supreme sense of survival did the man make it back to dry ground. Not having insured his dream sufficiently, Yoseph found himself penniless. He had severed all ties with academia and was forced to work at Sugar Loaf for a pittance. Actually, half-pittance, since the institution had carefully constructed its finances to the point of hiring people only part-time; this allowed them not to have to pay for medical, retirement, or even insurance to drive the facility vehicles. The policy forced Yoseph to live under a federal housing assistance program, Medicaid, and even food stamps. Determined not to lose all sense of independence, he bought a third-hand, ten-speed bike and rode to work. The truth is, he was almost forced to pedal: he didn't have enough money to buy a car or pay the gas.

So Yoseph Talon cruised on his bicycle eight miles each way, and in so doing exercised his innate independence, his desire to be out of doors, and his heritage, for the Talons had been successful cyclists in Europe for generations. Any serious rider could tell he carried the genes: the powerful legs and especially the ability to ascend steeps hills all the time breathing with his mouth closed. Yoseph was a born cyclist.

I remember this unique man because of the conversations we had. When he took breaks, instinctively he sought a private sanctuary, often in

one of the storage rooms where I kept cleaning supplies. He was such a fascinating man I happily closed the door when we chatted. And that's where he confided in me that he had one trait he knew he couldn't reveal lest his employers think him not eccentric but crazy: he had a passion for picking up soda and beer cans as he went to and from work. Sugar Loaf was comfortably situated in the country, which gave the city dwellers ample chance to toss their cans out the car windows. The reason no one noticed Yoseph collecting them was that he carried a telescopic-handled butterfly net with him as he rode. This enabled him to scoop the empties without having to dismount. He was so adept that without a falter he put the cans in the big wire basket atop the handlebars and never missed a pedal.

I've been rewarded many times from the notes I kept those forty-three years at Sugar Loaf, and one of them was when I was reminded of one of the most charming incidents I experienced at the facility. There was a dear and ingratiating woman, a Med Aide, who had worked at the health center a dozen years. She chose the night shift because that was when her estranged husband, a butcher by trade and a viscous man, often drunkenly crashed into the house and beat her. Once on the night shift she eliminated the black and blue sores.

At sixty-five, Yoseph felt he was over the hill when it came to relationships. Still, he had a soft place for Amy, a Med Aide. Not wanting to embarrass the woman, Yoseph was content with projecting his affections vicariously. He did this by taking the money he got from twenty beer cans, buying a lottery ticket, and leaving the signature blank. The last year Amy worked at Sugar Loaf, Yoseph Talon gave her one of the tickets on her birthday. The simple note he included said a great deal about his heart and how he felt about Amy.

"If you win everything, may you have a joyful life.

If you win nothing, may you have a joyful life

knowing that there is one person who thinks you are worth millions."

When the Med Aide won the twenty-two million pot, the entire organization celebrated. Across ten counties, facility after facility proclaimed October 13 "Amy Day." And, true to her kind and generous nature, the very trait that had drawn so much grief to her from an abusive husband, she bought every Staff, Administrator, and Resident a present. Most gifts were small: a box of cigars, a stationary set, a bird hotel for Martins. But she made one exception: she bought YosephTalon a spanking new Victory motorcycle.

In time, Yoseph's health began to sag, but not his wunderlust. The next Easter vacation he got itchy feet to travel the perimeter of North America. We never heard from him after his departure except for one postcard from Quebec. He said to Amy simply, "Wish you were here." I knew from my storage-room chats that the trite words said volumes of passionate and compassionate warmth.

I smile as I read my notes what the ex-university man christened his motorcycle: "Amy." The Frenchman always pronounced it not the Anglicised A-Mee but the Frankaphone Ah-Mee, as in I love. He would also have loved the irony of his death since he owed his bike, his eternal freedom, and the way he bought them to an unfulfilled love via empty American beer cans --- not French wine bottles.