The Old Man and his Rambler

Mr. Stanley was a plump, robust and mild mannered nondescript man of sixty-seven years old, who was our neighbor when I was growing up on Cayuga Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota in the late 1950s, who had worked somewhere in the city for the railroad. He retired in 1959; I was twelve years old then. He bought himself a brand new shinny automobile, a Rambler.
I’d visit him now and then, briefly hanging my hands and head over the wired fence my grandfather had constructed between them and us. He lived with his wife Anglia, and had a son, perhaps in his late twenties back then. He always wore his old railroad cloths, clean but old—blue jean trousers, with those straps that are attached to that go over and around ones shoulders, also he wore a blue jacket—railroad style, and a variety of hats, more like caps, railroad genre.
At first I wondered why he did what he did, wearing day after day that same old clothing (although I realized he was never going to a fashion show)—he even showed me once his railroad watch, it was gold plated, I think he said he worked for railroad some thirty-seven years, said, “This is what you get after some many years, not much but better than nothing.”
I got used to seeing him in those railroad duds (as we called clothing back then), even got used to those caps of his. He always looked he same, then one day he came back up the driveway to his house, parked a new 1959 Rambler in front of his house—a light creamy brown color to it, a little chrome on the sides of the car. After that first year, summer to summer, he knew that car pretty well; he could recognize a dirty spot on it at twenty-feet, with one quick glance, and he carried a rag in his railroad trousers, to wipe clean any blemish he may spot.
There he’d be standing in his driveway, washing his car, with that blank look, with nothing to look at but the car and the sparkling glitter of the back and front bumpers, reflections of sunbeams bouncing off those chrome plated bumpers, and even a slight glitter from the side pieces of chrome attached to the car. I remember his son came by once, paid him some attention, glanced over by the fence, said a few words, and then was gone.
“How do you do, Mr. Stanley,” I’d say coming home from school—somewhat yelling from a distance, and there he’d be washing that car again. He often times didn’t say a word, I thought maybe he was mad or was preoccupied, in one of those daydreams moments old folks get, or something—perhaps even he simply didn’t hear me, deep in thought about that Rambler. If the car was in the garage, he usually was either pacing in his backyard by his garden, the one his wife attended to more than he, and if he saw me he was quite friendly—so again I say, I doubt he was being rude, he just was not attentive.
He often just walked about hurrying, or fumbled, in and out of the garage, tinkering with something sitting on an old wobbly wooden stood that looked as if it was going to collapse from his weight at any moment.
His wife bought a birdbath that year of 1959, she often looked out the kitchen window, and she tinkered with that as much as her husband washed his car. I think it was a tradeoff, but I think his toy was more expensive than hers.
He and his wife, when not washing the car, or in the garden, or tinkering with the birdbath, they sat in their kitchen looking out the window, I often could see them from my backyard. Drinking coffee most often, and a few times I saw their son—who’d stop over now and then, more than, than often. That took them away from staring at me while I was playing my backyard, or digging into my potato patch and so forth. I don’t think the son ever looked at me but once or twice, I had only seen him in those years a few time likewise, never did he say hello, and just went about his business. I did more looking at him, than he at me I suppose.

In 1960, that fall I turned thirteen-years old, in October, three months later, the old man died, Mr. Stanley, I think he was sixty-nine years old then—had a heart attack. And right after that, that Rambler of his got put away, in the garage (likened to cloths in a cloths closest full of moth balls) for a number of years. His wife couldn’t see to sell it. I had asked to buy it a few times, after I had gotten my license at sixteen-years old, but she’d simply say, with a half grin and smile, “Sorry but I can’t seem to part with it, or get myself to selling it, although heaven knows, I could use the money…” and that was that. And then one day her son came over, took the Rambler out of the garage (because I saw him do it, but he didn’t see me watching him, although I was in the middle of the backyard raking autumn leaves), and that was all that was ever seen of that Rambler, from that day forward in our neighborhood.
I had noticed he seldom stopped by, but on occasions he did, and picked up his mother for Thanksgiving dinners, I remember that because she was well dressed one Thanksgiving, and I asked her, “Where you going all dressed up, Mrs. Stanley?”
“Oh,” she said proudly, “my son is coming to pick me up for Thanksgiving Dinner,” she had come out of the house to check on the birdbath, it was chipped I recall, and there were autumn leaves in the bath. I do say she got her money’s wroth out of that birdbath. And then her son rode up in a different car, not that Rambler, and picked her up, I don’t even think he looked my way, he had that same old blank look on his face his father had when washing the car—not that he was trying to be rude or anything, he just wasn’t paying attention—that is, not concentrating on anything that wasn’t in his direct radius of a few feet, to most anything around him beyond that. And off they went.
I thought about that Rambler that day, as they pulled out of the driveway, he evidently sold it, perhaps thinking she’d never get rid of it, it was a reminder of her husband, and perchance he noticed she could no longer bear to know it was in the garage, some twenty-feet from her outside door steps. It was to my guessing, she had come to the end of her grieving period.
In any case, she up and died, leaving her property to her son, although he had not seen me since I was a teenager, if indeed he had ever noticed me at all—at any rate, I was now twenty-seven years old. He evidently could not associate me with being that young boy in the backyard so many years ago, he said to me, walking to the fence, that separated them from us, he said for the first time ever, words to me, “Are you the new owner of the house?” realizing my grandfather who had own the house had died, but not realizing my mother had bought-out her siblings, and was now the new owner, but all of us had lived together all those years, when he was coming and going and visiting and never looking anyplace but in front of his nose, never turning about, to see who was making the noise in the backyard across that wired fence, or any other place.
Well, I had been off fighting a war in Vietnam, and to Germany for a number of years, while in the Army—and I was on my way to Italy for a new assignment. “No,” I said to him, meaning I was not the new owner, “I’m just here visiting,” I remarked; he didn’t ask who I was, so I didn’t say.
“I heard the old man who owned the place had died?” He said, as if not really interested, but for some reason said what he said more out of instant than carrying to have a conversion or perhaps he wanted to know his new neighbor, because he now owned the Stanley house. He didn’t know our last name (it was 1974). I said, “That’s correct,” and then he excused himself, to finish whatever he was doing, and from what I saw he was doing was cleaning out the house as if he was going to put it up for sale, or rent it out—as usual he was busy. And that was the last I had ever seen of him.


No: 521 (11-23-2009)