I'm Just a Poor Boy

I remember him as an awkward elementary school kid with buggy eyes and a slack face that quickly corrected when he smiled.  It was 1980 and I was a sixth grader helping the younger kids as a "Reading Buddy."  He struck me as a person moving in slow motion, encased in a kind of physical and mental molasses.  I felt something akin to pity, seeing his vulnerability and the reluctance of others to engage him.  He lived on 2nd Street which ran North-South for the entire length of our small town of two thousand people.  My neighborhood was at the Southern most end and the High School was at the Northern most end.  It was the perfect conduit for my bicycle explorations, running parallel to Highway 37 which cut the town in half as it connected us to towns above and below in the Southern half of Indiana.

I would pass his house on the way to Park's Grocery where I'd exchange an empty pop bottle or two for dimes to buy a sour sucker or multicolored Sprees sealed in a small paper packet.  These were Sprees the size of peas, before they made them larger and packed them in paper tubes.  He and his sister would be playing in their yard, dirty, dog-like, smudged and subservient.  His face would light up when I passed by and he'd wave enthusiastically with a wide goofy grin.  I even stopped once out of curiosity and made the connection that he'd been my Reading Buddy once, in case he'd forgotten.  His Mom must have offered me a drink because I remember stepping into their house and wondering at its disarray, its smell of smoke and sour body odor, incredulous that people lived this way.

Before we moved away from that small town my family attended some kind of community service at one of the local churches.  It was part of our local festival that was going on at the time.  His family was there, to include his Dad whom I'd seldom seen.  He was wearing a set of ill-fitting Army Greens with a few ribbons on the chest that must have been a left over from military service, hair slicked over and shiny.  I recognized that it was likely the only suit that he owned and was brought out for these kinds of occasions, when he needed to present himself with a bit of dignity.  His son was there with his lazy smile and lanky limbs now that a few years had passed.  They were a mystery to me, poor in a way that my young mind could not quite grasp or understand.