Memories (Is a Really Dreadful Song)

I think everyone has a person or character in their life who was a small part of their conscious, every day existence for a while, who then suddenly vanished from their life as effortlessly as they entered it, never to be seen again and who you haven’t thought about more than a small handful of times since they went.

Something God and I were talking about the other day made me recall an old man I used to see around my neighborhood as a kid. He used to fascinate me and the other kids and I talked with him often, but one day he just wasn’t there anymore and I haven’t thought about him since, until now.

My conversation with God went something like this:

God (imitating some moose or walrus or something): *GRUNT* that’s the sound he made. 

Me: Oh. That noise reminds me of something. When I was little I used to hang around this old guy who made that exact sound. 

God: Uh…what? 

Me: He was always in the woods, grunting. 

God: …You hung around with some old guy in the woods who grunted a lot? 

Me: Yeah, he used to grunt really loudly while he was doing his thing. 

God: ???? 

Me; Oh for goodness sake, it was nothing like THAT. He grunted when he was stacking his wood. 

God: Excuse me? 

Me: He was always chopping wood. With an axe. And he’d stack it in piles. 

God: Have you ever considered therapy?

See, I grew up in the woods. Before you all go thinking “That explains EVERYTHING!” I was NOT raised by wolves or a strange new age cult, it’s just that our house happened to be among the trees, near the river on the edge of the woods. It was a great place to grow up, open space, trees to climb, no traffic or people, just long days of adventuring and being outdoors. And this old man would often be there with his axe, chopping and grunting, grunting and chopping.

As an adult you might be somewhat wary of an unwashed, old, grunting dude who skulked in the woods with an axe and who talked to children, but as a kid you don’t see anything suspicious or unreasonable about this, so we started going over and asking him intelligent things like, “what are you doing?” and “What’s your name?” and stupid stuff like that.

He was a man of few words but he was always polite and he’d answer our questions gracefully. Gradually, like kids do, everyone lost interest but I kept talking to him every day. Sometimes, when I was out walking my dog, I’d take him a sandwich or a cookie and ask him about various things and he’d sit back and talk. He got a real kick out of my dog too which made me like him even more. I got the feeling he didn’t have any family anymore and liked the company. He wasn’t creepy or dubious or anything like that, but he wasn’t quite all there either. We’d stay for ten minutes or so then I’d wave goodbye and head home.

Strangely enough, when I saw the movie “Slingblade” for the first time, it was like a jolt from the past - Billy-Bob Thornton’s character reminded me big time of that old man. He was an older version but the same simple, sad, somewhat sweet personality. You know, apart from the whole murder by Kaiser Blade, thing.

Nowadays if a kid talks to some old guy in the woods, someone’s on the phone with the police before you can blink. Back then everyone knew about the old guy and that he was harmless and no one batted an eyelid, except now and then to chide us not to bother him and let him do his work. Back then it was conceivable that something could still be innocent and harmless.

I wonder what happened to that old man? Did he stop coming round because he died? Got sick? Moved someplace else? Did he know that someone, all these years later would be wondering about him? Life’s full of ships that pass in the night, but just sometimes, some of them stick with you as a reminder of who you once were.