Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

We reminisce because it’s difficult to remember the future.

It was a confusing year, like all years.

Mom could never remember whether to feed a cold and starve a fever or starve a cold and feed a fever. So she fed a cold, fed a fever, fed a stranger who’d driven into the ditch by our mailbox after a night of revelry, fed the gas delivery man, fed anyone who had to drive more than four miles home (she gave them sandwiches wrapped in wax paper in case they had car trouble), fed the, well, you get the idea.

She fed the new neighbors. Their previous home had a woodstove built by the father. It was made of wood. It burned about four hours. That had precipitated their move.

The head of the family, or least he thought he was in charge, said he was a mahout. Only another mahout knew what that was. He cared for elephants. Elephants were scarce in our neighborhood, so he cared for a goose named Erle Stanley Gander. The man acquired fame by calling the local dispensary of adult beverages from home and telling the bartender, “If my wife calls, tell her I’m not there.”

The neighbor tried using a golf ball and club to find the location for a new well, claiming he could always find water on a golf course that way. That left him knee-deep in disappointment. My father used a dowsing or divining rod to find water for the well. I can’t explain his technique. I’m not sure I believe it worked, but it did.

The neighbors had a boy named Walter the Third, who came from a long line of two Walters. I was happy to have another child in the neighborhood. Walter had a framed poster of Speedy Alka-Seltzer hanging in his room and suffered from asthma. His father blamed the asthma on Walter’s habit of chewing Bic pens. Walter and I grew up with the ubiquitous Bic Cristal plastic pen. That pen was reliable (Slogan: “Writes first time, every time”) and chewable. Walter had been like a tree stump, always in the way. They didn’t have energy drinks in those days, but his family began eating a lot of squirrel stew. That gave Walter energy, but he had trouble crossing a road. Walter wasn’t always sure where he was going, but he was always on his nattily dressed way. Walter looked dapper even if he was too old to wear dappers. He and I built a dogsled. The dog sat on it and we pulled it around, but that wasn’t enough for Walter. He wanted to be the first to catch a Chilean sea bass in a Minnesota river. He stared into a local river as Narcissus stared into a pool.

“Do you know what I like about Saturdays?” Walter asked every Saturday.

“You don’t have to go to school,” I’d answer.

He thought I was psychic.

I pedaled my lucky bicycle down the road one Saturday. Every bone I’d ever broken had been broken on my lucky bike. I’d recently been to the drive-in movie theater, fondly referred to as the Passion Pit by teenagers, where I’d trembled at scary movies featuring monsters, vampires and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

As I biked by, I saw something under the bridge over the river. It dripped green stuff like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was moaning, ”Nooooo!”

I was so frightened I beat my bicycle home. I worried the creature was coming for me.   

Walter’s catlike reflexes had failed him and he’d fallen into the river. An adequate swimmer, he swam from where he’d fallen in to the other side of the bridge to find footing to escape the water.

The creature I’d seen had been Walter covered in aquatic vegetation. Walter was relentless in his pursuit of that sea bass. There are slow learners and there are no learners. Walter never made the same mistake twice. He made it many times. It was the squirrel in him. He fell into that river frequently. After I’d seen this oft-repeated performance a few times, I figured out the creature was Walter.

John O’ Callaghan said, “The ‘what ifs’ and ‘should haves’ will eat your brain.”

We all have the shoulda, coulda, wouldas, but I don’t spend much time in their company. Whenever I become upset about an experience that’s beyond my power to alter (I’m not a wizard), I let it go.

I figure it’s Walter under the bridge.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.