It's a special kind of bittersweet when you remember joyful times with a forgotten acquaintance and look them up, only to learn that they're dead a half dozen years or more.

This time of year sucks to be an office drone. You've got lunch hour to take care of anything that requires daylight. Like visiting a grave to pay your respects.

John Chundak was a coin dealer who had a store in Rutherford, near where William Carlos Williams lived. A burly walrus of a man, his nickname was Gadzooks, after the bear from the Rankin-Bass Easter Bunny movie. He visited a friend and their kid exclaimed, "Daddy, it's Gadzooks!"

That stuck. He was a good man, quiet. A Vietnam War vet, green beret, 4 tours. I met him at the Nutley VFW coin show, held every Sunday. I bought a few on the installment plan, then he hired me to watch his table to he could shoot Dewar's at the Bar with his pal Ronnie.

Ronnie would get a few in him and salute while shouting "Airborne!" but he was a happy drunk. John read Tom Clancy before he went big, and he wrote the word "Integrity" on his coin price catalogs so browsers wouldn't steal them. He taught me a lot about calm dignity.

Lessons that didn't stick until later. He encouraged me to throw the shot put on the high school track team. Took home a trophy but didn't have perseverance then. He was kind and defied expectations of him.

When I read old enough to work part time, I had to leave the job. Ronnie and Mr Chundak gave me a tiger stripe camo fatigue jacket festooned with patches. I wore it in high school even though my punk friends hated on it, and the Army wannabe Reagan youth said I didn't deserve it.

I wish I'd stayed in touch with him. He died in 2011, I found that when I looked him up, after memories of freshman year came back. I wrote "Freedom Bird" in his honor, it's in Life During Wartime. When @LawrenceBlock asked me to write about collecting, I had to honor him again.

So he gets a mention in "The Green Manalishi," which will appear in LB's next anthology, Collectibles. I'm honored to be in it, and happy to honor John Chundak again. I just found his grave is a short drive away, and I think I'll leave a silver coin on his marker tomorrow.

Oh yeah. Here's Gadzooks. There's definitely a resemblance.
Thanks, John.