JULY 3, 2020 – On this cusp of Independence Day, I feel no shame in being American; no more shame than I’d feel imprisoned in a zoo of odd creatures, from a sloth to a turtle to a peacock to a lion to a wolf to a (breast-beating gorilla) to a playful porpoise to an improbable giraffe . . . to squirrels on the loose, entering and exiting the grounds freely.
Speaking of America, I’m reminded of the bizarre encounter I had with a Bosnian émigré couple in my hometown, located at the geographic heart of North America. It was a lesson in “assumptions” and a glimpse into how America became a zoo.
One summer day in 1974 after my sophomore year in college, I took our dog on a long walk. Along the way I encountered a grade school buddy of mine out in the yard of a forlorn house. It wasn’t his family’s tidy abode in the neat neighborhood in which he’d grown up not far away. We hadn’t seen each other in eons. I stopped. We chatted. He was renting the house, hoping to buy. We’d taken opposite directions in life. It was the last time I thought of him until a summer evening 36 years later.
Dad died in May 2010 and Mother moved to assisted living. They’d saved everything and had a cavernous house to accommodate such a habit. The project took nearly a year of meticulous sorting. Many times as I drove between the “Anoka” freeway exit and my parents’ neighborhood, I passed the house where I’d encountered my grade school buddy. The house had been bizarrely upgraded. Now overloaded with stone façade-work, it also sported a double-car garage door with a painted mural of a deer in the woods. Often in the driveway sat a guy and a woman, both about my age.
My buddy, I remembered, had grown up in an avid deer-hunting family. The mural fit. And the guy in the driveway? People change over decades, but from a distance I imagined my buddy could appear as the man did. Moreover, when I’d last seen my buddy, he’d said he was “renting, hoping to buy.” But I was always in a rush, so I never stopped to confirm the man’s identity.
During one of my inventory-taking sessions, however, I found an attic stash of Christmas photographs from family friends. Among the photos was one of my chum’s family. I removed it, figuring I could use it to break the ice with the guy—my buddy?—on my next drive past the stone-crazy house with the deer mural.
Soon afterward the opportunity arrived. The guy and his wife sat in their usual spot. I turned slowly onto the driveway apron and stopped. After pulling the Christmas photo from the glove compartment, I stepped out as the man rose and walked cautiously toward me. I still couldn’t tell if he was my old buddy. “Hi, Dick!” I said, like a golden retriever from the American menagerie. “It’s me, Eric Nilsson!”
(Cont.)
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
