Bret passed tonight. Got a call from my mom at about 7:30. He went peacefully at home. The wife and I came over right away. There were already at least 20 people there. After hugging my sister and my nephews (he left behind two sons, 19 and 22) there was a lot of standing around. After about 1/2 my wife and I volunteered to go to the store for food etc. We grabbed some deli stuff and snacks. I also grabbed a 12 pack of Bud Light...Bret's beer of choice.We were only gone 20 minutes and when we came back there were now close to 40 people at the house. It seems fairly morbid but since it was only about an hour and 1/2 since he had passed Bret was still there...lying in state. Everybody grabbed a beer. His best buddy since HS, Tony, called us all together and gave one last toast. "Bret...he was a great son, a great husband, and a great father...and an even better friend." That's 100% true. Oh, and at the end of Tony's toast I added "GO BEARS" which was totally appropriate.I took my sons and ran to 7-11 for another 3 cases of beer and some ice. For the rest of the night we all stood around and tossed them back. His house was always the "party house". 4th of July, Memorial Day, Super Bowl, New Years, the first of the month, a day that ends in "Y"...there was always a house full of friends and drinks and pool and horseshoes and stories. He would have been pissed if we had all stood around with our hands in our pockets.I spent most of the night drinking beer with his 3 best buddies out on the front lawn. Guys he's known since HS (he moved to Calif from Illinois his freshman year). Every story either ended with a laugh or "yeah, that sounds like him"...usually both. I honestly have never met a guy like him. Salt of the earth. Worked his ### off. Day-in, day-out as a supervisor in the oilfields. He was the kind of guy that you wanted on your side if you were ever in a fight and next to you if you needed a friend. One of the things that I probably said 4 or 5 times tonight was "I never knew anybody that didn't like him". That wasn't bull ####. He could make friends at a monster truck rally or a Streisand concert. His door was always open and his kegerator was always charged and cold.I need to head to bed soon. I'm not a T&P kind of guy. Neither was Bret. But if you feel the need silently toast him sometime this weekend. If you want to pay tribute to him help out the next guy you see pushing his brokedown car on the side of the road. The next time your at a bar and you see a guy who looks a little down buy him a beer AND start a conversation with him. If your favorite team loses a big game cuss about it for a while and then buy drinks for the guys at the bar rooting for the other team.Bret was a quasi-redneck from southern Illinois and called Bakersfield his home but the best way to describe him was "a real Mensch". Love you, br
h, GO BEARS!
Good luck to you too in re to the stuff you're going through.
Drinking game down?
no keys to football gb...
Guy from high school in prison for life, no possibility of parole. Curious why, nobody knows, and nothing on basic google/bing searches.
It takes a lot of work to pull something like that off. Most of us are too lazy or too stupid to do it right.
