He Was an Interesting Neighbor

© 2005 copyright Raymond C. Evans

He was an interesting neighbor, must have been about sixty years old at the time. He was quiet, very shy; he would seldom talk unless one could get him cornered. He was a good neighbor, just quiet and reserved. Perhaps he was more intelligent than most of us and simply didn’t have time for small talk. He looked old for his age, moved slowly; head hunched a little low like a beaten dog. If he had been a dog I’m sure his tail would have been between his legs. They had an organ in the house, he could play it quite well, we enjoyed hearing the music but even the organ seemed to lack any notes of happiness.

He suffered a lot; he had emphysema, (bad lungs). His breathing was always labored and it was easy to see the suffering of suffocation in his eyes. “He had contracted the disease during the war”, he said, “in the shipyard, while working with asbestos”. I don’t think he ever smoked. He was unable to work at normal jobs but was able to run a small business of his own making signs and picture frames. He did this in his shop behind the garage. Even that was difficult for him; fine particles of sawdust would aggravate his injured lungs. His wife worked in a big department store. She too, was quite reserved and quiet; she would rarely let you know how she really felt about anything.

He would joke with and tease our little girls sometimes. He would greet them by saying “hi boys” to make them giggle, other than that, for this neighbor, life seemed pretty grim. Eventually the elements that make this an unusual story would unfold.

The time came when I could tell he had some extensive project going on in his shop that was way beyond the mere makings of picture frames and signs. I could hear the saws; I could hear the hammering and all the rest. I was curious; to say the least, yet not so curious that I would go over and ask what was going on. I didn’t want him to think that I was just a nosy neighbor. Still, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t very curious.

Eventually his project came to light; it was a boat, length about sixteen feet, width about four and a half or five feet. It was up on two saw-horses when I first saw it. I have no idea how he got it out of the shop and on those two saw-horses. It would not seem to me that his physical condition would allow it, but I could see that it was true with my own eyes. Perhaps, it would seem to me that he must have found some help for that. I certainly would have helped him if he would have asked.

He was standing in the boat the first time I saw it, the boat was up on saw-horses and he was just standing in it. The engine was running and he was leaning over enough to look over the side to watch the propeller turning. Satisfied it was turning correctly; he then shut down the engine and climbed out of the boat.

Sure I was curious, so I climbed through the rail fence to chat with him a little bit. Someone had given him the little five horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine, he said, and someone else had given him the old outboard motor propeller. He was just trying to make sure that it was all working properly. He was a man of few words so I really didn’t expect him to say much more. He obliged, very much according to his nature.

Naturally I thought perhaps he was going to take up fishing in one of our many lakes. It’s not unusual at all for a man to take up fishing and boating around here. That would have been a normal explanation. I was hardly prepared for what I was to hear a few days later in a chat with his wife over the backyard fence. I had noticed the boat was gone and I hadn’t been seeing her husband around the yard.

“Is your husband out enjoying his boat”, I asked. “Well he took it down to the Sound to test it and he never came back”, she replied. “He headed out to Alaska to take his boat commercial fishing”, she went on, “we may never see him again”. She went on to tell me that he wanted her to go meet him there in Ketchikan. They had lived there some twenty odd years earlier. She refused to go which was leading to their separation.

I was shocked to hear this little bit of news. It is true that you can put a boat in the water here at the southern end of Puget Sound and go to Ketchikan, Alaska but I never expected to see anyone actually do it. Especially such a frail man in an open boat with a small used Briggs & Stratton engine for power. The distance of this trip would be in the neighborhood of one thousand miles up the Inland Passage. These would be protected waters; even so one could expect some pretty rough water in some areas. Not the kind of trip you would expect to see accomplished by such a man as this in an open boat.

It was a couple of weeks before I had a chance to talk to the neighbor lady again. “My husband has made it to Ketchikan” she said. “Did he have any problems with the boat?”, I wanted to know. “He said the only problems he had was that the boat kept getting on fire from the muffler and the boat needed some ballast to keep it right side up”, she replied. I guess it was an easy fix for him, just bail water on the fire and put some large rocks in the bottom of the boat for ballast. He eventually realigned the exhaust to solve the fire problem and the large rocks worked just fine as ballast.

What would drive such a frail man to do such a deed as this? We’ll never know, perhaps he thought he could make a living commercial fishing at a time when he could do little else. Perhaps it was just a last gasp at independence, a sort of salute to his past, in remembrance of better times. We’ll never know that either.

We do know that he showed up back on the doorstep next door on the very day that their divorce was final. How ironic is that to a normal mind? His former wife was mortified. He was very sick now in the last stages that one could live with emphysema, what could his former wife do but to humanely take him in? She made him stay in the shop though; it was summer so he would not be too uncomfortable there. When it turned winter she felt she had no choice but to let him in the house, it was the only humane thing to do. He died very shortly thereafter. A few years later she too, passed away.

Yes he was a very interesting neighbor, “there for the grace of God, go I”.