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The Curmudgeon Takes a Walk

A description of his physical and mental characteristics.

Walter Wallclaw (you’ve read of him perhaps. We’ll simply refer to him as W.W.) was not too tall and not too short, slight of frame, but with some sinew evident. He walked upright and vigorously, eyes set straight ahead rather than downward cast. W.W.’s hair was long and curled down about his collar bones. He wore a beard in winter and shaved himself in summer. And those eyes, those inscrutable eyes! He looked about him with a cynical air, always attuned to the world’s imperfections of which he found not a few.

The thing with W.W. was that he couldn’t stand irritations, like that computerized machine in the belfry of the local Congregational church that chimed every hour and half hour and played mawkish hymnals at noon for ten minutes straight. The neighborhood noises traveled down his synapses and jangled his nerve endings like a whip flickering the flanks of a horse. Some days he was not able to rise from his bed and he would toss and writhe while in an unhealthy dream state. If this occurred in summer when the noise of the outside world was at its strongest, coming through open windows, then woe-be-tide! And W.W. would suffer throes of torment and plot his revenge should he ever recover, which he usually did (recover, that is).

Of W.W.’s youth and a possible explanation of his unhealthy development.

“You’re such a nervine,” W.W.’s mother used to chastise her son.

“But Grandpa left snots on the side of the bathtub!” he cried.

“Don’t you understand? He’s an old man,” Mother explained.

W.W. wasn’t just upset about Grandpa’s habits. He had a running skirmish with Uncle who also lived in the house. He would get a spanking if he dared touch Uncle’s stereo turntable, and he would get a spanking if he made too much noise around the house while Uncle was listening to a recording of Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

But no one in the household ever stood up for W.W. He was always the guilty one when anything went topsy-turvy, if a plate was broken, or the cat’s tail pulled, or the back lot was set on fire (in truth W.W. did do some of those things). One exception was the time Grandpa set the curtains aflame with his pipe; W.W. couldn’t be blamed for that.

Lastly, W.W. resented all of the pick, pick, picking that he received whether it was for his appearance or his conduct in church services where he squirmed like a chained prisoner or felt so nauseous that he fled the pews for the safety of the open air, for which he was later roundly punished.

Forsythia in bloomHe Takes a Walk

The spring of the year. Green shoots erupted from every nook and cranny of the yard: beneath the imperious black walnut tree, below the skeletal serviceberry, emerging up from the thick layer of oak leaves and peeking out among the branches of the blossoming, unruly forsythia. Everything poked its head above the earth, the native and the alien, the admirable and the nefarious.
W.W. looked out at the sunlit yard through the French doors of his kitchen; at all of this new growth and freshness and…scowled.
“Just think of all the noise, now that a long winter is over! The gooney birds won’t be able to contain themselves. Who’s the first in the neighborhood to mow their beloved lawn, usually around supper time, just to spite me?”

W.W., expecting the worst, nevertheless put on his boots and headed out to the street. Sure enough, the lawn service arrived next door and the serviceman, looking like some sort of assassin with his cap pulled down over his eyes and wearing a mask, began rolling out an infinitely long hose and began spraying the earth like an alien being discharging his death ray.

W.W. walked past the operation.

“Now put up one of those little pesticide warning signs that nobody pays any attention to, you creep,” he muttered while fixing a withering stare at the serviceman.

He climbed to the top of his cul-de-sac (in the good old days we called it a Dead End) where it joined with Main street. In the bright warmth that would otherwise bring joy W.W. grimaced, for it was motorcycle season once again. And sure enough, there came one roaring by. No mufflers. No mercy. Just plain excruciating noise. And that was a Harley Davidson. The so-called rice-burners were even worse. They would wind up like a banshee on the run and you could hear them wailing away miles down the highway.

W.W. lowered his head and walked on. The motorcycle was followed in quick succession by several small, squat vehicles built low to the roadway, with inimical-looking spoilers and fins, blaring deafening notes through trumpet exhausts. Boom boxes hidden in their trunks vibrated like earthquakes.

W.W. flinched.

“Sure, sure, push your noise off onto everyone else, you cockroaches. Ba! Ba! Ba! Boom! Boom! Boom! You got a three cylinder lawn mower engine in your car amplified to sound like a Lamborghini, you frauds! Why don’t you grow up!”

W.W. stormed along the sidewalk and took a turn off Main street. Here was a maze of classic bourgeoise development. With every few steps he would kick up an empty small plastic bottle, a nipper, usually something called “Fireball-Cinnamon whiskey”. They lay next to empty Budlight beer cans and were the preferred drinks of litterbugs. The bottles and cans were surrounded by their companions, cigarette butts.

“What an addicted, alcoholic society,” W.W. grumbled, while seeing nothing edifying in the daffodils emerging on one of the residence’s lawns.

The development was convoluted. Turning down one of the numerous avenues W.W.’s ears were once again assaulted, this time by the machines of a commercial lawn service. One man madly maneuvered a deafening quick-turn beastie like the devil was after him while another chap, oblivious of the decibels, strutted around aimlessly with a leaf blower.

W.W. held his fingers to his ears.

“I’d like to tell you what to do with that blower of your’s.” He gritted his teeth and scurried on.
But soon he met his true nemesis: those ubiquitous barking dogs. It seemed that every household had not one but two and sometimes more screaming, rabid canines protesting the fact that a pedestrian would dare stroll past their yard.

W.W. became really angry when accosted by these “man’s best friends”. He had always had a pet dog in his youth, but in those days the dogs ran free and followed their masters around everywhere without incident. And not everyone had a dog. It was peaceful, sort of. Now the presence of dogs became intolerable to him. Maybe it wasn’t the dogs, maybe it was the owners he hated. He felt that 99% of people shouldn’t have dogs or children.

“Plastic fish; that’s what they should have for pets,” was W.W.’s common refrain.

As he walked past a house with a broad picture window facing the street two retrievers, one blond, the other black, sitting on a divan obviously placed there for the purpose, devilishly began barking and raging at W.W., repeatedly banging their muzzles against the glass until the foam rose to their jowls.
“Ba! Ba! Ba!” W.W. retorted angrily. “And what do you have in that house that’s so precious, you bourgeoise trash. You got gold bars in the cellar? A drug factory maybe? You got nuthin’. The cockroaches already have everything you got, why should they break in? You want security? Put a street sweeper in the kitchen next to the stove and pack a Colt automatic on the shoulder. They only bark when they have to.”

After this outburst W.W. passed several more houses with whining, aggravating dog choruses. He rounded a curve and ended back on Main street, head lowered, none the better for his walk. Two pedestrians with their small pedigree “what-cha-ma-call-its” in tow came chattering towards him. Predictably, the little hairy charmers started yapping convulsively. The owners made a show of reining them in.

“It’s two-legged animals I worry about,” W.W. mumbled and walked on dispirited.

But just as he was about to turn off Main street to go home he paused before a rambling Federal-style domicile with black shutters askew. It was sided with asbestos shingles, and it had a mildewy staircase off to one side reaching to the second floor. This old Federal had been divided into apartments.

As W.W. stood there a moment pondering, a dog emerged from around the corner of the house. It did not bark or growl, it just walked slowly towards him with a pronounced limp until it stood humbly at his feet, in obeisance, as if to say “Well, here’s a human and I expect him to treat me kindly”. Its hoary muzzle and its moist, blood-shot eyes spoke of its age. It had an enormous lump on its back. The non-descriptive animal (originally it might have been a lab of some sort) lowered its head silently, took a few more hobbled steps and just stood there deferentially.

W.W. looked at the dog. He reached out a hand, stroked the old-timers head gently and asked as graciously as he could muster, “And what is your moniker, my young monk?”

The wizened old dog seemed appreciative of the solicitation. Then it slowly turned, quietly limping off and disappeared behind the staircase of the apartment house.

W.W. watched as the animal shuffled out of sight. Inexplicably, something deep within suddenly made his throat swell. He went home and sat in the kitchen for a very long time looking out at the greening yard where everywhere nature was expressing a new beginning.

L.C.