The Saddest Little Man I Ever Did See
A truly strange and sad interaction at the airport, plus painful profiles, true crime stories, the wonders of nature, plus much more.
Well, the day is here: We have a new president. Donald Trump’s second inauguration was today, and while I wouldn’t have wanted to be there, I do hope this one guy—the saddest little man I ever did meet—is there.
Who is this sad little man, you ask?
To be honest, I don’t know; I never got his name. But that’s about all I didn’t get about him, when he approached me in the St. Louis airport and cornered me into one of those how-did-I-get-here/what’s-happening-right-now conversations that you have to experience to fully believe.
It all started with a bouquet of flowers.
I was holding them, leaned against the wall outside of the restricted area for international arrivals. Courtney had just landed, and I was waiting for her to clear Customs and get her bags.
I noticed a man noticing me, and I could tell there was something about me—something about my clothes or, more likely, the flowers—that had caught his attention and would no doubt result in him talking to me. When he approached, it was clear it had been the flowers.
After asking me where I’d gotten them, he said he wished he’d thought of getting some, and with that, I got my first clue that he, too, was there to pick up a significant other.
Somewhere in the ensuing conversation, we established that we were both there from Columbia, about two hours to the west. He started to run down his entire CV, in which he said he was a veterinarian and listed off a number of impressive degrees, along with the commentary of being “insanely over-educated.”
I laughed and said I knew what that was like, and when I recited my advanced degrees, he homed in on the law degree.
“What do you know about probate court?” he asked.
Nothing much, I told him honestly; it wasn’t my practice area.
This seemed a minor annoyance to him, but it didn’t dissuade him from telling me why he’d asked in the first place. It was a conversation that started mid-stream, but the important parts were he was 1) fighting a conservatorship and 2) the judge—“a Democrat”—was out to get him.
Shit, I thought. Just the way he said it—“Democrat”—all dripping with disdain and a tone of “You get it, don’t you, fellow white person?” I didn’t want to get into some political argument with a stranger at international arrivals, as the bouquet of flowers in my hand clearly suggested.
I got so distracted by the “Democrat” comment that, honestly, I wasn’t really clocking what he was saying about his case. I heard him say quite a number of times “That’s just hearsay; that’s just hearsay.” But I thought little of it, despite being the correct terminology for an actual legal concept. It all just sort of rumbled on by, like a train that had long since left the station and unconcerned with anyone trying to get on board at this late stage. The whole time I’m looking past him, over his right shoulder, each time the automatic door opened and promised a new traveler would be emerging, each time hoping it would be Courtney, and I could leave this walking Fox News segment behind me. But as luck would have it, she’d be a minute, and in that time, I’d learn more than I ever wanted to know about this man.
When I came to and attempted to engage with what he was saying, I became aware that he was talking about politicians and donations. Donald Trump. Mike Johnson. One other that I didn’t recognize but was most assuredly a Republican.
“I raised more than $100,000 for Trump,” he said.
Wow, I said, partly in a faux impressed manner and partly in actual awe. It didn’t seem that far-fetched to me; he probably did, this old goat; he probably donated all that money and, in his way, helped Trump get re-elected.
He told me that, because of his generosity, he’d been sent tickets, by Trump, to attend the inauguration, and then he told me of the parties he’d get to attend as a result.
“Whiskey and wine are gonna flow like rivers,” he said.
He and the woman he was picking up would be traveling again for a relatively quick trip to D.C. to take part of the festivities. It all sounded so plausible and so very much like something I did not care about in the slightest. But the doors kept sliding open and the people who kept walking out kept on not being Courtney, so I continued on.
It’s probably about here that things started to clear up for me. In the circular way that some conversations do, we ended up back to his legal troubles, which clearly were never far from his mind, and for the first time, I realized that this seemingly normal, slightly conspiratorial rabid Republican was the subject of the conservatorship, whereas before, I’d somehow missed that detail. I’d just assumed it concerned somebody he knew and loved, not that he himself was deemed to be in need of a conservator.
But being the polite chap I am, I didn’t say, “Wait a minute—it’s YOU who’s under the conservatorship?! But why?” That didn’t matter though because he told me anyway.
It was because he said he knew Donald Trump.
Yeah, his son overheard this at one point, and according to the man, promptly told some of his doctors; this was apparently evidence of some sort of mental deficiency.
“Well, I do know them,” he said. “I mean, just the other day I received some award from the GOP. I got so many of these things they won’t all fit on my walls.” Plus, the aforementioned inauguration tickets.
All of this was just nonsense, because of all that money he’d raised, you see.
“You know those Capital One cards?” he asked.
Sure, sure; I know them.
“Well, I maxed that thing out three separate times, donating to Trump. I just wasn’t going to let the Democrats steal this election like last time.”
Oh. I see. So maybe this was why his son was “hearsaying” him into a conservatorship.
Doors opened. Doors closed. No Courtney.
Now that the man’s credibility had been called into question—which, in one moment, he didn’t even seem to quarrel with the diagnosis; he just said that if they had evidence for that, he’d accept it but if not, he was going to get that stricken from his medical record—he told me a lot more stuff that could be true or could be bunk.
The son that had put all this unpleasantness into motion lived out west and worked for a big software company; he was a genius and made half a million dollars a year. He was on his third marriage, this time to a Brazilian woman, who was a nice lady. He had two granddaughters. He clearly seemed to love all of them, and he was quite proud of them. But then he was back in a defensive crouch, accusing his son of attempting to amend legal documents that would have deprived his own daughters of their share of the man’s eventual bequests when he died.
“That’s just not right; that’s evidence of a behavioral issue at play,” he said.
He accused the son of being greedy, of having borrowed $117,000 from his mother, than man’s late wife, and never paid her back once he got this big tech job paying him half a million a year.
He told me about his Type 2 diabetes and the medicines he takes, how doctors now lack common sense for some of the things they’ve prescribed for him, and of course, he talked about the exorbitant cost (no worries, he could cover it).
He spoke of how he’s only allowed a small debit card now that lets him get gas and some groceries, but often it’s so glitchy that it doesn’t work. He told me of all the millions he has in various retirement accounts, “so many accounts the IRS couldn’t believe it.”
I didn’t think I could find his incredibly unrestrained candor capable of painting a sadder picture than he already had, but I had much to learn, because though the room had gradually filled up, Courtney was not among them. Nor, it seemed, was the woman he was there to pick up. So we kept on talking.
Once or twice during the conversation, he’d casually thrown off this line: “I hope she’s on this flight.” I thought this was, quite frankly, just an older man’s way of talking, as if maybe he weren’t quite familiar with the complexities of travel, including the lingo, you know, how we talk about it. Or maybe it was a bit of nervous chatter, a lame attempt at a joke. In any case, I didn’t once contemplate that he might be speaking literally.
This highly unlikely interpretation was further assuaged by the ringing of his phone. He answered, and it was clearly his lady friend. He couldn’t hear her, but he didn’t think anything of it. He was just happy to hear from her; she was on the other side of the door, somewhere, among the masses. But as he talked about her a little more, something seemed a bit off.
They planned to stay the night in St. Louis; she was in no hurry to get on the road to Columbia after the flight. She was from Germany, where she worked as a farmer as part of a collective that saw her manage some 15,000 acres. She has 17 very fancy, very modern tractors, he told me.
“She’s got her little dachshund with her,” he said. “Paid $2,000 to fly first class with her.”
That’s crazy, I said. So, what exactly did she do? Did she have to buy it a ticket or what?
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I just helped her pay for it.”
At this point, he showed me a photo that was the wallpaper of his cell phone. It was a young blonde woman, perhaps in her mid-20s, long hair under a camouflage baseball cap. She was strikingly beautiful. At first, I wondered if it might have been one of his two granddaughters he’d mentioned. But no, it appeared this was “the first one he’d met,” and that his current lady, the one who was to be walking through the door any minute, looked like this photo but just 30 or 40 years older.
Shortly after this, he left to go explore the room in order to get a better look at the people who’d accumulated on our side of the doors. He wandered off, looking at people with what was clearly a bit of uncertainty, the kind of uncertainty that said he knew what he was expecting but also didn’t know, like he could miss her if he weren’t careful.
In that moment, finally free of him and able to think about everything without additional information steadily being fed to me, I came to the conclusion to which perhaps you’ve already arrived, dear reader: This man, quite likely delusional about his familiarity with Donald Trump, was most assuredly being catfished.
Courtney finally came through those doors, and in the midst of our reunion, I saw the man, standing out in a red Tommy Hilfiger jacket among strangers, looking the kind of lost one can only look when waiting for someone else to arrive. We left quickly, and as a result, I don’t know if that awkwardness of his posture ever got the chance to soften into that sweet relief when you finally lay eyes on the person on whom you’ve been waiting. I think I know the answer, but in a way, it’s too sad to acknowledge.
Then again, I suppose that much is inescapable. Because maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she came through those automatic doors just minutes after we’d left, pampered dachshund in her surprisingly toned arms from years of farming. Maybe they’re freezing their assess off in D.C., and he’s convinced that he’s at the vanguard of making American great again again.
Either way you slice it, he’s the saddest little man I ever did see.
Ten Worth Your Time
- Speaking of sad men, Vulture reported a chilling and detailed story of abuse by author Neil Gaiman. This story had been alluded to for a long time, and for those of us who follow book-related news, we knew a story must be on its way, being reported out by some outlet somewhere. The rumors were too strong; the allegations too persistent. And this story didn’t disappoint when it comes to the thoroughness of its reporting although it’s disappointing on human and moral levels.
- Alice Munro, the famed author of short stories, had a terrible secret of her own: Her daughter was being abused by Munro’s partner; she knew it; and she did nothing about it. This is another tough-to-read deep dive, this time by The New Yorker, and its another entry in the great-art-monstrous-artist canon that will challenge what we do with such art, whether we should engage with it, and how to evaluate it if we do.
- Despite a name that perhaps seems like it would be up my alley, I’d never heard of the Gone South podcast until one episode in particular was shared on Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History feed. The episode was all about Buford Pusser, the famed sheriff of my home county back in Tennessee and the inspiration of the 1970s Walking Tall films that were remade in the 2000s by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Pusser was a mythic figure, credited with cleaning up corruption and taking on the moonshiners and bootleggers and all sorts of criminals operating along the Tennessee-Mississippi state line close to my home. (Fun fact: My grandfather ran against Pusser for sheriff, but despite that bit of family history, I never really dug into the history of the man.) Gone South ran a two-part look into Pusser’s life as it relates to one tragic detail: the shooting death of his wife Pauline. The story had always been that Pusser was caught in an ambush, and his wife was shot and killed while Buford escaped with a gunshot to the jaw. But recently, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation saw fit to exhume Pauline’s body after it was discovered that no autopsy had ever been conducted. The mystery of why it was never conducted was just one of many that suggested perhaps Buford Pusser wasn’t quite the man he seemed.
- I’ve shared the work of The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson before, from his podcast to his articles. The one I think about most was shared in this edition of the newsletter from almost a year ago, discussing how Americans stopped hanging out with each other. He’s back with another dispatch from the loneliness/isolation beat with this one: The Anti-Social Century. It’s an interesting look at how we as a society are choosing to spend our time. From the article:
The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America's civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality
- This long feature in WIRED is a great piece of crime reporting. Even those not chronically online are likely familiar with the phenomenon known as “swatting”—the calling of 911 as a prank to suggest some dangerous situation is happening at a location with the hopes of wasting law enforcement’s time and terrorizing those at the residence. This story follows the reign of terror of one notorious swatter in particular who’d turned his sights not on residences but on schools: In this age of too many school shootings, this person called in fake ones to panic the administrators and students and stress the response times and nerves of local police. But one self-motivated private investigator was determined to find the suspect.
- One more true crime story for you, and this one from The Atavist is a doozy: It tells the story of an old-fashioned bank robber, who was so prolific that he’d hit two banks so close together in time that authorities would swear there had to be two of him to be able to pull it off. They just didn’t know they were right: Twin brothers who’d learned the criminal life from their father were the thief known as Australia’s After Dark Bandit. But, for anyone who’s ever tried working with a sibling on a business venture, things don’t work out.
- Did you know it’s been 30 years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park? I didn’t either, until this WyoFile oral history on the effort, which documents the support and opposition to the plan, its implementation, and the results.
- The WyoFile story said that wolves were added to the endangered species list in 1974. In 1990, the desert tortoise was listed as a threatened species, and with this designation, suddenly there was a great need for tortoise counters—these dedicated souls who go out and walk miles and miles of desert to document the tortoises’ comings and goings. It’s known as “tort world.” But because the reptile moves through desolate desert landscapes, the tortoise counters often come across dead human bodies, those disposed of in the vast nothingness of that arid and inhospitable landscape. This story from Outside details the work out of the tortoise counters but also documents what can happen when they stumble upon something more than mere tortoises.
- We’re now a week beyond Quitter’s Day, so I’m hopeful that you’re hanging onto whatever resolutions you set for 2025.I was interested to read this short essay on the author’s strategy for reading 100 pages every single day. It’s as simple in practice as it may sound lofty in its aspirations: It boils down to simply reading more. I don’t mean that flippantly, and the author certainly never approaches anything so flippant. But that’s the truth of it. Find more times to read. Keep a book on you always, and don’t be precious about the amount of time you spend reading—sessions need not be an hour or longer. Numerous 10-minute chunks throughout the day add up. Our phones, social media, and my beloved podcasts are all impediments to an honest goal of reading more. There is truly no magic formula if we’re simply willing to drown out distractions and pick up a book.
- One-of-a-kind auteur and all-around nice guy David Lynch died this past week. His films and shows have challenged me as much as they’ve entertained me, and one of his final major projects was Twin Peaks: The Return. I haven’t seen this 18-hour work, but in honor of his passing, I’m going to make sure I do. Here’s a Harper’s piece from around the time the show was airing.
More From Me
Over on my blog, I’ve been writing about various topics of interest to me.
What's Bringing Me Joy: EverStart Maxx 1200-Amp Power Station
Culture Diary
Here’s a collection of what I’ve been consuming in the past week.
The legend for my list was stolen from Steven Soderbergh, where ALL CAPS represents a movie, Sentence Case is a TV show, ALL CAPS ITALICS is a short film, Italics is a book, and bold is a live performance or show. A number in parentheses after a TV show highlights how many episodes I watched. An asterisk after an entry means it’s a rewatch. The source of the movie or show, whether streaming service, physical media, or in theaters, is shown in parentheses as well.