Walks with my dad

 
A few scenes with my dad are rather special to me. Times when I discovered something about how he felt; things that helped shape the way I see and feel about things today. I was about eight years of age at the time of the following events.

There always seemed to be so very many people in Lune Street, Preston; a busy, bustling street with so much to see and take in. I guess we had gone about a quarter of the way along it when I heard the sounds that roller skates make as they move across flagstones – a sort of click-clack as the wheels cross the join between two stones.

The sound quickly got closer, and suddenly there he was: a man aged about 55 with thin, grey hair, scuttling in between the legs of the passersby whilst seated on a square, padded piece of wood with small metal wheels at each corner. He propelled himself along with the aid of two short sticks, his hands protected by pieces of cloth. Very skillfully he manoeuvred himself around, and was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
There was something else about him, something that only registered in my mind after he had passed by. The man had no legs, just two short stumps also wrapped in pieces of cloth. I was just about to as Dad about him when we came across this next scene.

An elderly man was seated on a box in a doorway to our left. His fingers were moving slowly across the page of a large open book that he held on his knees, and he was talking at the same time. The man was blind, and he was reading from the Bible which was in braille. On the ground at his feet was a cloth cap into which people had thrown a few coins. Dad dropped something into it too as we passed by, and the man paused in his reading to quietly say thank you.

When we had gone a little way down the street I asked Dad what had made the man blind (because Dads are supposed to have the answers to many questions, aren’t they?). “I don’t know, lad,” said Dad as he stopped and looked at me. “But every time I see him there like that, it makes me think how fortunate I am and I thank God that I have my sight.”

Those two encounters have stayed with me all of my life.

Dennis Crompton © 1994

We thought we had troubles...

We moved into the school house in early December with my high school teaching job. It was basic low-rent accommodation and came with problems. Only one top element on the electric stove worked. A week later we found one room of the house was damp and smelled. Investigating, we found an outside drain in the garden wasn’t working. I complained in person to the staff member responsible for school housing. A few weeks later, I complained in writing. Later still I informed them I’d be seeing the health inspector if no action had been taken within the next few days. An inspector came round the following day; we were mistaken he said. Nothing is wrong.

As for the stove, the lady overseeing repairs and maintenance for school houses suggested I purchase an electric fry-pan as repairing the stove would be too costly. She was single. Prim. Thick of skin and uncaring as to the needs of a couple with four children. After several persistent complaints regarding the blocked drain, my bold wife took a group of the board governors, and with a spade showed them the blocked drain. The health inspector from the local council then agreed that it was blocked and the next day workmen from the council fixed it. A week later the stove was fixed and from that time on the maintenance lady from the school office seemed primer than before and colder. I was now a persona no grata.

Still, the days seemed brighter after that and we took stock of our neighbours. Numbered among them was a newspaper editor, a science teacher, a returned World War II soldier, an ex-schoolmaster and his wife, several retired farmers and people either in business or retired from business. All seemed free of the problems we had in settling into the school house.

Appearances can be deceiving though. In time we learned that a few doors down that way, the couple fought over trifles, regularly, and they would have given a writer enough material for a year’s worth of Coronation Street bust ups. Across the street that way, the little dog was given more affection than the man’s wife or children. Two men died of heart attacks within six months of each other and a family with two young men grieved over the death of one in a car accident.

We made friends with some and realised how fortunate we were; our family was complete. Then at breakfast one morning I was startled to hear the most poignant sound of someone wailing. It was a woman. Then it stopped  and I thought I’d been mistaken; but it started again some five or ten minutes later and left me wondering what might have cause such sadness and whether I ought to see if I could help. The anguish in those cries echoed in my mind throughout that day and only when I returned home did I discover the reason.

An elderly couple, she with snow-white hair and he, neat in tie and suit strolled regularly together in their afternoon walk. They lived a few houses away. My wife told me the elderly lady on waking that morning, found her eyesight had gone. It took a few weeks before the couple appeared in our street again. They did, he holding his wife closely and she holding her head high as they made the best of it together.

And we thought we had troubles. Since then, I’ve wondered how I’d react if I woke one morning to find I was blind.

Dennis Crompton © 2000
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)