Walking Alone

I’m pretty sure my long-time buddy Albert would have enjoyed the walk I took through our old Hamilton Junior High neighborhood in Fresno a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful Saturday morning in early November — sunny and not too warm or too chilly.  The neighborhood trees were reflecting autumn’s glory, with red and purple and yellow leaves shining brightly in the maples, the liquidambars, the sycamores and ash and Bradford pear and Chinese pistache trees.  A great day to walk.

And Albert and I had walked all through that neighborhood — and miles beyond it — many times since we had both retired years ago.  We’d done it in winter, after a big rain and when heavy fog enveloped the streets and homes.

We’d done it in spring, when flowers had pushed through the ground and started showing their hues, and when all the front lawns had turned green after a winter’s hibernation. And we’d even done it during scorching Valley summers — though we tried to get finished early enough to avoid the worst of the day’s heat.  No matter — we always ended up drenched in sweat.  It was all good.

We had often walked for hours at a time, always starting on Thorne Avenue just south of Clinton, where we had parked across from Hamilton.  Heading south, we’d trek down Thorne or Adoline or Farris avenues toward downtown — and sometimes made it all the way to the Fulton Mall, about three miles away.

If we had headed east, we’d go a couple of miles past City College to Ratcliffe Stadium, where the Fresno State Bulldogs used to play football before they moved north to a new and bigger and better stadium.

Heading west, we’d stroll down Clinton toward West Avenue — two miles away — then head north to Shields, where — at the corner — Al’s dad had his barber shop for decades and where one of my dad’s best friends used to run an auto repair shop.

And if we had gone north, we’d walk all the way to Shaw Avenue — three miles distant — through the Old Fig Garden neighborhood, which is where most of Fresno’s “old rich” still presided in giant mansions that went back 75 to 100 years.

We’d take these walks because we’d grown up in this neighborhood.  We met at Hamilton when we were in the 7th grade — so we knew each other for a mere 60 years.  We managed to keep in contact after college, even when Sharon and I started moving around the country.  Eventually, of course, Sharon and I returned to Fresno.

On this particular Saturday a few weeks ago, I decided to go north on Thorne to Shields.  It was only a half-mile or so, and the houses along Thorne looked exactly the same as they had when I was a child, bicycling around. The stucco, pastel-painted single-family homes had been built just after World War II, and they’d gone through several generations of people since I lived around there. And the folks who are there now are keeping those homes “up” — beautifully.  The lawns were all mowed.  Falling leaves from the trees had been raked.

Albert and I had always made a point of engaging anyone we saw in the front yards or on the street in conversation.  In all the years we did that, I can’t remember a single person who turned away or who responded in anger to our greetings.  Sometimes it was a conversation that lasted no longer than a few seconds — a hearty “Hello, how are you?”  Occasionally we’d stand and talk for five or 10 minutes to a resident who was working in the front yard or painting or working on a car.

On this day, I did not encounter anyone as I walked up to Shields — at least, not anyone human.  There were a whole lot of squirrels running across lawns and up and down trees — more than I could ever remember from years past.  One of them even aggressively tried to follow me.  No, I’m not kidding.  I thought he or she might want to take a piece out of my leg.  I moved faster then, up to Shields, and eventually wound up a block east of Thorne, and headed back south.

I walked past the home of Fresno’s former mayor Ted Wills — the first mayor I had covered when I was the youngest TV reporter in town.  He’s long gone, of course — and the driveway leading to his detached garage in the back was now gated.  But behind that gate was a vintage yellow 1960’s VW “bug” — not a knock-off from the 2000’s, but the real deal.  Ted Wills would have liked that.

I walked past Hamilton on Thorne Avenue, veered a block west to Adoline, and continued south, past the houses that used to belong to the Calderwoods and the Downeys and the Stuckerts and Hillyers and Tripples and the Cuttings — all of whom I knew when I was a kid.  I was almost to University Avenue — just past the house where former Police Chief Jim Packard had lived — when I saw two dogs, running around in the middle of Adoline and looking as if they might be itching for a fight or a bite. Not feeling in the mood for either, I turned right — and that’s when I saw Bob.

He and I had grown up together on Arthur Avenue in Fresno.  We started playing wiffle ball and softball and hardball and football on the street when we were in elementary school.  He was a year ahead of me throughout school.  In 1969, when I was at Fresno State, Bob had gone off to serve in the military in Germany.  When he returned, he moved back into the house he’d grown up in to help care for his parents.  Even after they passed away — and after his younger sister had died — he stayed in that house, year after year and decade after decade.  He’s still there.

On this Saturday in the life of the world, Bob was hobbling south on Arthur, using the cane he’d had to use for at least three decades after an accident with a chain saw while he was cutting tree limbs.  He nearly lost a leg — but he kept walking and walking, and here he was, 74 years old and showing every year of it, making his way on his morning stroll.

I knew I had to talk with him, though we had not had a conversation for several years.  I walked up to him, said “hello,” and his response was, yes, one of surprise, but also one of instant recognition.  We started talking and continued walking, and eventually we made our way back to the front of his house — catty-corner from my old home, the 100-year-old adobe at Arthur and Weldon.  Bob has a razor-sharp memory about everything that’s ever happened in our old neighborhood and about everyone who has lived there.   I spent a half-hour, catching up on what’s happened to the house I grew up in — to Eleanor and Rita’s place across Weldon — to the Garretts’ home across from Bob’s — and to numerous other houses whose owners or kids I had come to know as a child.

Eventually, I took my leave, with the promise of “keeping in touch.”  I hope I will.  I made my way back to Hamilton and into Schlein Park, the wonderful green space that’s been part of the school forever and which was named for a long-ago principal.  Albert and I had played loads of baseball there as kids, and we’d also run cross-country there on many foggy mornings as part of gym class.

That Saturday, elementary school kids — four teams of them — were playing spirited soccer matches, and their excited parents were rooting for them, loudly and proudly.  I liked the idea that the school had opened the park on weekends for kids to play.  Back in our day, we had to climb over the chain-link fence to get in and out.

And then it was time to leave.  I headed back to my car, parked on Thorne, and drove back home to Madera County.  Yes, I think Albert would have enjoyed this three-hour excursion.  But he wasn’t there, because a couple of months earlier, his heart had finally given out from the same ailment that had killed his dad when he was only 67.  That was one of the things Albert and I had shared over all these years — that both our dads had died early.  Mine made it to 68.

After they had both passed, Albert and I always had those ages in our minds. Could we outlive our fathers?  Turns out, we both did.  Albert was 72 when he died.  My age.  He would have gone years earlier if not for that magnificent, world-renowned doctor in the Bay Area who took on his “hopeless” case after Fresno physicians said they could do no more.  That doctor gave Albert seven more years of life — which he used by walking and kayaking and walking some more.

So on this day — that Saturday in November — yes, he would have enjoyed walking by our old haunts, looking at the old homes and the old trees and the old sidewalks and talking about old times, the good and the bad, that we had gone through, like everyone else. I wish he’d been there.

But as the great Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully said on his last broadcast before he retired — when he knew that many folks were grieving his departure — “Don’t be sad that it’s over.  Smile because it happened.” Vin Scully was a very wise man.