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Patrons at BJ Gators talk about plans for the new year as the old one ends.
By JAMIE JONES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 1, 2002
HERNANDO BEACH -- Beneath the green garland and red velvet bows, the man with the white hair bent his elbows over the bar.
George Pfeifer laughed, a hearty, wheezing cackle.
His fingers curled around a Budweiser.
He sighed.
Almost a new year. Nine hours away.
Televisions played, smoked filled the air, and Pfeifer sat, wondering. How to go into the new year when the old was hard?
Pfeifer's getting older, feeling older.
"Body and soul," he said.
He's a real estate appraiser from Spring Hill, 56, a former Navy SEAL. Has a wife, five children.
He took a sip. Smoked his Winston.
"I'm a young man in an old man's body," he said. "It's hard getting older. I don't like it. I know, it's a fact of life. But I don't like it."
Another sip. Another laugh.
"Ahhh, George is a good man," said his friend Rick Walls. "A lousy pool player, a good drinker, and a very good man."
Pfeifer sat a little taller on his stool.
"I plan to make a lot of the next year," Pfeifer said. "I want to get myself into better shape. I want to be beautiful." Another smile.
"I'll quit smoking," he said. "I'll quit drinking so much."
A round of laughs from the BJ Gators bar, a slice of polished wood that draws friends every afternoon into the smoky room on Hernando Beach. On Monday, almost every seat at the bar was occupied, all celebrating the coming new year.
Walls stood beside his friend, drinking rum splashed with pineapple juice. He usually takes whiskey but has a cold. Someone told him he should drink juice, hence the pineapple.
Walls is 6 feet 6, with a long white ponytail.
He said he made his first trip to BJ Gators more than a decade ago. In the past few years, he has come almost every day to have a drink, or two, or more, with his friends.
"I have hundreds of friends in Hernando," said Walls, 63. "It's just a really good place to live."
Walls got drafted into the Army on his 22nd birthday. He stayed there for 29 years and 24 days. Then his wife died. He moved to Florida and got a place on the Weeki Wachee River.
Later, he met another girl, a fiery redhead half his age. She loved him, took care of him, did his laundry, cooked his meals. But she got depressed and killed herself early in 2001.
Walls did his own laundry on Monday. He has never had to wash and fold, and with every cloth, he felt his wife gone.
"I'm still so sad," Walls said. "She was a lovely girl, a lovely wife. I miss her every day."
He wears a golden "D" on his left earlobe, from his wife's favorite necklace.
Walls has no remarkable plans for the coming year, no grandiose resolutions.
Just the simple things.
To stay busy, and happy, as happy as he can.
And maybe to take a chance once in a while, maybe sing a Conway Twitty song on karaoke night.
"I have everything I could possibly want," he said. "I'm not wealthy, by no means. But I can go where I want, do what I want, afford what I want. That's enough. That's more than enough to have a good year."
-- Jamie Jones can be reached at 754-6114. Send e-mail to jjones@sptimes.com.