Simple Folk

Monday, July 21, 2008
We stopped by the garage this morning to see when the Saturn would be ready. " Garage" is a bit of overpromise. It’s a re-purposed small ramshackle barn, with two bays, one lift, and the requisite broken-down trucks parked on the grass on either side. It was raining, so I stayed in the car while John went to talk to Clyde, whichever one of the three workers he was.

The house next to the barn seemed his likely living quarters, a two-story box of early 1900 vintage – maybe even late 1800’s. Like the barn, it was grey and faded, with siding missing here and there, and a patched roof. One window had a plywood fill, and the other had a bedspread tacked over it. Clearly we were Clyde’s biggest customer in some time.

From the garage, a woman with long auburn hair and bare feet blackened with – what, tar? -- sauntered over to me, an old dog at her side. She was clearly Mrs. Clyde, out for a tete-a-tete with husband in the garage, and she looked so much like her daughter, Jeane, pronounced jenay, that I smiled and rolled down the window at her approach. I remarked that she and Jeane could be sisters, so noticeable was the resemblance. She smiled, revealing her missing front teeth and others soon to follow, and said with a slight French-Canadian lilt, “I got another one like her, when she broke her ankle, the doctor asked if they was twins. Ere’s five years between em, huh. That’s how they’s look so much alike.”

Clyde joined her at my window and introduced himself. A foot shorter than she, he was older, rounder and just as pleasant. He reached in and shook my hand, then asked me to do him a favor: follow his hand. He waved his hand in front of my face, told me to follow his movement, then stopped and said, “Now you’re pasteurized.” (Past your eyes, get it?) I howled with laughter as he accepted my reaction with pleased confirmation.

These simple people, with obviously little in the way of wordly goods, have managed to raise a lovely, well-spoken daughter and put her through college, likely will do the same for “the other one like her,” and are obviously loving and happy people. It was a lesson in the value of simplicity and testament to the total uselessness of cynicism.

The car will be ready late today, or failing that, early tomorrow morning. I can wait.
Betty