Wimpy

I suspect every village has its characters, orphans from society's mainstream.  In my hometown, there were Fluke and Spook. But the most memorable character of my childhood was "Wimpy", presumably nicknamed for his resemblance to the Popeye comic character.

Wimpy lived alone in an apartment above McIver's Store and as far as I could tell, made a living by digging. My father would hire him, in those days before backhoes, to dig the myriad of ditches a plumbing and electrical business required. Sewer lines deep below the frost line; ditches for buried electrical wire from yard pole to house or business ... and perhaps a grave for the funeral business. And Wimpy was a master ditch digger, creating beautiful ditches, if you can say such a thing about a ditch. Straight and true with perfectly vertical sides. And then, once complete, his creation destroyed, filled in, like a wave destroying a sand castle.

Wimpy could often be seen on main street, standing by the wooden, outside stairway to his apartment above McIver's, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other - for hours. You might expect that he would be a target of ridicule, particularly by ignorant juveniles. But I cannot recall witnessing a single instance. He was one of the innocents. I can't recall ever hearing Wimpy utter a single word so it was tempting to view him as a kind of robot, but of course he was not.

A case in point: ... Hoplin & Nelson hardware had a long canopy over the front door and the display windows. Above the canopy was a high redwood front which required regular painting.

My father was up on the canopy doing that tedious task and when he was about to take a break for lunch, he discovered the ladder to the canopy was no longer there ..

and Wimpy below,  laughing.


Copyright © 2017 Dave Hoplin