A Somber Note On The Holidays

 

(This article appears in the winter edition of The Bright Side of 50).

While not a chipper holiday story, it's been a lifelong lesson.

It's the sad life of a wandering, giant displaced farm worker called Walkin' Joe. We paperboys tormented him in our mischievous childhood. Reportedly a rider long ago on an Orphan Train, he became a legend in our rural town. Joe likely never sat for a Thanksgiving feast unless the pool hall gave out pickled sausages, but he garnered a reputation for eating prowess at farms where he worked. A homemaker proud of her kitchen talent would have been pleased by Joe's capacity, but a total lack of manners didn't earn return invitations. The sounds, accompanied by natural bodily reactions, were a warning about Joe - lots of grub, served outside.

Farmers witnessed his power - windmilling bales of hay or lifting machinery - but he lacked social skills and rarely uttered a word. Folks wondered about retardation, except he could speak a little German from the days in his youth working alongside prisoners at the town WWII camp. The camp contracted out prisoners for farm work, so generations of carriers taunted him with calls of "kraut" or "Dutch" or "Heil Hitler." Lost in an era without a homeless category, his refuge was the pool hall. He slept in hallways, haystacks, empty vehicles - anywhere. He often was jailed for loitering or vagrancy.

Late one evening, a woman was startled at the rear of a Laundromat by Joe, in his underwear. Washing his only clothes, he went to jail. Once around Christmas, our pal bought a pair of mittens and handed them to Joe, but had to duck Joe's haymaker. Had he ever received a gift? Several years later he served a year in the pen for a $5 bad check - a meal at the mayor's café.

He dropped off our radar until years later when, as a young reporter, I was handed a blank obituary form for "Joseph (?) Smith." The editor joked this was a guy everyone knew, yet knew nothing about. The funeral home guessed at his birth and hometown and there was no surviving family, no address, organizations, religion or any connection to the town he worked and walked around for decades. It got to me.

At a short memorial with a few of us, cops were pallbearers. Every holiday I recall our intrusions into his lonely, lost life. The opportunity for amends is long past, but memories of our mistreatment have left me with an awareness of those less fortunate. This childhood reflection has impacted both my personal and professional life. During a news career it has led to coverage and editorial support making the public more aware of folks who still slip through the cracks of society.

Walkin' Joe died in the state nuthouse of gangrene of the feet. We buried him on a wintry day in a pauper's grave, Christmas Eve, 1970.