I’ve lived in big cities much of my life – New York, Tokyo, Chicago, others. Many people like them, which is why they’re so crowded. That leaves small towns for the rest of us.
City people always seem in a hurry to get somewhere else. They’re wary and for good reason. At my first party in Manhattan, the apartment window had bars on it. The host wasn’t a prisoner; he paid hefty rent. The steel bars were to keep out unwanted visitors.
I don’t remember people hurrying in my childhood small town in Ohio. Folks seemed pretty content to be where they were among others who felt the same.
You didn’t know everybody, but you recognized them. That awareness silently enforced a code of civil behavior that did not survive in the anonymity of big cities. Eye contact was the sidewalk norm. You said hello to people. They replied because they suspected the best of you until proven wrong.
When I used our party line to call a childhood friend a long time ago, the Operator said, “I just saw him go into the drug store. I’ll ring over there.”
Years later, as a national correspondent, I heard about a strange behavior erupting in a small southern Illinois town. I knew exactly what that meant.
For most people, Tamaroa was a 40-mile-an-hour speed zone on the way to somewhere else. When I drove into town, sure enough, there he was up at the north end of Walnut Street. Clarence Chapman, a 64-year-old forced out of farming and foundry work by economics and asthma, was waving his hand in the air.
Or he was sitting in a lawn chair waving all friendly-like, as if he was happy to be sharing this moment and place with anyone passing by, even strangers. Now, waving in a big city is likely to bring over a taxi or someone asking what’s wrong.
Nothing was wrong with Clarence. ”We just decided,” said Clarence, often joined by his son, Sam, ”that the world had maybe forgotten how to be friendly-like, locked up in their air-conditioned cars and basements and all.”
So, for years in all kinds of weather, he’d be out in front of his shed waving at everyone who passed by, cars, trucks, tractors, bikes. Even pedestrians got a wave, as if he was happy to see them there and share a brief moment in that community.
Funny thing is, virtually everyone waved back. Being friendly soon became infectious.
Waving is a simple thing. It’s not confined to small communities, but it is very important there. It’s friendly, acknowledges the other’s presence, and shares a good feeling, even with strangers.
Not waving is not good. Either you’re blind or, worse, arrogant. So, if you hear a horn beep or see a waving hand, you wave back just to be safe.
Some people stopped to ask Clarence what was going on and ended up swapping stories for a short, pleasant time. There were even reports of waving going on across town. At times, if the Chapmans were late coming out of a morning, passersby honked or waved anyway.
Occasionally, someone yelled at the Chapmans or made a rude hand gesture. The men smiled back, waved, and thought, “It’s good they’re just passing through.”
A few drivers did not wave back, which was OK. ”It just ain’t some people’s way to wave. They’re city folks.”
I left the Chapmans that evening, sitting in their lawn chairs out by Route 51.
We waved.
One Sunday afternoon, when I was the Tokyo Bureau Chief for a U.S. newspaper, I answered the phone at home. “Mr. Malcolm?” said the distinctive, aristocratic voice that was instantly familiar but couldn’t possibly be who it sounded like.
“This is Bill Buckley. How are you, sir?”
I was, in a word, stunned. The architect of the modern U. S. conservative movement, the man with the rapier intellect and tongue whom I had watched so often on his iconic TV program, was phoning me at home by name in a foreign country and asking after my welfare.
Pinch me, please!
William F. Buckley Jr. was traveling through Japan. He knew it was last-minute, but he wondered if I might possibly join him for dinner that evening at his hotel. I considered it for a nano-second and said yes. I could squeeze him onto my impossibly crowded weekend calendar.
Just kidding. I accepted instantly. At dinner, he was the most gracious, open person, genuinely inquisitive about me and Japan.
I said – actually, I think I gushed – that I had watched many of his Firing Line episodes. He smiled. He thanked me for watching.
It turned out he was writing an article for my paper’s Sunday Magazine. And William F. Buckley Jr. wondered, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition, if I would generously read the article and give him my honest opinion of its worth.
Buckley, the intellectual spine and inspiration of U.S. conservatism and founder of the National Review, was asking me to critique his writing. I don’t think I was able to speak at that moment. But I nodded, of course.
The article began as a simple account of a red-eye flight from New York to London. The stewardess told Buckley the movie projector wasn’t working — would he please take a look?
When Buckley stood on a seat and peered into the camera compartment, he realized he was not the repairman she had hoped. Just then, a familiar voice said, “Bill, get out of there and let me fix the thing.”
It was Hubert H. Humphrey, former senator and vice president, and Buckley’s polar political opposite. The former Minneapolis mayor knew with the utmost confidence of a Democrat that government could fix anything. Humphrey, at the time, was dying of bladder cancer.
Buckley surrendered the hopeless project to the ever-confident Democrat. The stewardess whispered that the pilot was a Firing Line fan and had invited Buckley to witness the landing in London from the cockpit.
Buckley described a magical sight, the lights of ancient London shining through wispy clouds as the plane slowly descended through the darkness.
Suddenly, the cockpit door burst open with a loud Humphrey entrance.
“Bill, what are you doing in here? What’s going on? Oh, my soul, isn’t that a beautiful sight?”
In his piece, Buckley proceeded to gently and eloquently describe his frequent political antagonist enthusiastically enjoying the plane’s landing as, in reality, he himself was coming in for his own end-of-life landing.
Next day, I told Buckley how genuinely and generously moving the article was, the nation’s leading conservative writing sympathetically about a leading liberal. It would make a sweet Sunday afternoon read for anyone.
Buckley told me later that the magazine editor had rejected his piece. I think it was probably too interesting.
When I grew up in the countryside, our address was RFD #2, Peninsula, Ohio. We had daily deliveries just like everyone else. But it wasn’t always that way.
In 1900, about 60 percent of Americans lived in rural areas, and 40 percent were urban. Today, it’s more like 20 percent rural, 80 percent urban.
Until 1906, rural residents had to go to town to get their mail, typically on Wednesdays, market day. But then came Rural Free Delivery, followed by Parcel Post.
That was, historian Daniel Boorstin wrote pre-Internet, “the least heralded and in some ways the most important communications revolution in American history.” Mail-order moguls like Richard Sears, Alvah Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward would likely agree.
So one day, about this peak time of year for mail, I showed up at Virgil Lane’s house in Hungry Horse, Montana, at 4:00 a.m., when his workday begins. By 5:00, he was picking up his mail 25 miles away.
Twice a week in those days, he began his 120-mile delivery route, turning his truck up the North Fork, a one-lane twisting, rutted, unpatrolled dirt road that paralleled the western boundary of Glacier National Park.
In the back, like a spare tire, he carried a snowmobile for those wintry mountain days that challenged even his 4-wheel drive. Annual snow could total seven feet. “It’s not too bad,” said Virgil, “The county plows the road once or twice a year.”
Six miles in came Merle Hulford’s mailbox, the first stop of 18. Then, mailboxes for Lloyd McCrorey and Clarence Rose, and on up Fool Hen Hill past Cyclone Point and Strawberry Lookout, where he encountered a car.
“How about that,” said the mailman. “Sometimes in the summer, it’s like Grand Central Station up here. I see two, maybe three cars a day.”
Then came the tricky part. Sometimes, moose and elk that can weigh up to 1,500 pounds prefer to take the cleared road, too. Then, they lay down for a snooze.
“One day it took me three hours to go nine miles,” Virgil said.
The rural postman then began the long drive back to town, stopping for outgoing mail at boxes where the red flag was up.
“Sometimes,” said Virgil, “the beauty up here almost knocks your eyes out — the trees covered with snow, the mountains standing over everything like white ghosts, the rush of the wind in the treetops. Some days you’re the only human to watch a complete avalanche over there.”
Our 14-hour day together ended back at Virgil’s house. As he removed his overcoat, I noticed an envelope in his vest pocket. Virgil rolled his eyes.
After delivering hundreds of letters passed countless mailboxes and several post offices in a 120-mile drive, Virgil had forgotten to mail his son’s letter to a girlfriend.
This is the 37th in an ongoing series of personal memories. Links to all the others are below.
Behind Johnny’s Desk, Before Ford Was POTUS, and a Dog Makes Her Rounds
A Hooker in the House, Whistle War, and Ann Landers’ Worst Mistake
More Neat People and a Nuclear Sub I’ve Met Along the Way
Malcolm’s Memories: A Toddler’s First Fourth
Malcolm’s Memories: Train, Streetcars, and Grandma
The True Story of an Unusual Wolf, a Pioneer in the Wild
That Time I Wore $15K in Cash Into a War Zone
I Fell in Love With the South, Despite That One Scary Afternoon
Wildfires I’ve Known
More Memories: Neat People I’ve Met Along the Way
Unexpected Thanksgiving Memory, a Live Volcano, and a Moving Torch
The Horrors I Saw at the Three 9/11 Crash Sites Back Then
The Glorious Nights When I Had Paris All to Myself
Inside Political Conventions – at Least the Ones I Attended
Political Assassination Attempts I Have Known
The Story a Black Rock Told Me on a Montana Mountain
That Time I Sent a Message in a Bottle Across the Ocean…and Got a Reply!
As the RMS Titanic Sank, a Father Told His Little Boy, ‘See You Later.’ But Then…
Things My Father Said: ‘Here, It’s Not Loaded’
The Terrifyingly Wonderful Day I Drove an Indy Car
When I Went on Henry Kissinger’s Honeymoon
When Grandma Arrived for That Holiday Visit
Practicing Journalism the Old-Fashioned Way
When Hal Holbrook Took a Day to Tutor a Teen on Art
The Night I Met Saturn That Changed My Life
High School Was Hard for Me, Until That One Evening
When Dad Died, He left a Haunting Message That Reemerged Just Now
My Father’s Sly Trick About Smoking That Saved My Life
Encounters with Fame 2.0
His Name Was Edgar. Not Ed. Not Eddie. But Edgar.
My Encounters With Famous People and Someone Else
The July 4th I Saw More Fireworks Than Anyone Ever
How One Dad Taught His Little Boy the Alphabet Before TV – and What Happened Then
Muhammad Ali Was Naked When We Met
When I Met Santa Claus in Indiana, He Knew My Name
An Easter Bunny Story That Revealed More Than I Expected
Behind Johnny’s Desk, Before Ford Was POTUS, and a Dog Makes Her Rounds
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