APRIL 2, 2023 – (Cont.) I’d always been curious how in the world or anywhere else you could drive a tank faster than one mile an hour without crashing into everything in sight—or rather not in sight, because absent high-tech cameras, how would you see more than 1% of your surroundings through the narrow viewing slit(s) inside the machine of war? I couldn’t imagine.
Yet there now in the middle of the street (the sidewalks were too icy and dangerous) in front of our house was my chance to learn from the only person—chemist or otherwise—I’d ever met who’d driven a tank. Fred’s description was as amusing as it was informative. To my astonishment, he pointed to a nearby boulevard tree of sizable girth and said a tank could mow over such an obstacle without hesitation. “Inside the tank, you wouldn’t feel so much as a bump,” he said. “Forty-eight tons on the move are basically unstoppable,” he added, referring to the mass of a tank.
In that same conversation, Fred mentioned the demonstration of a new rifle that was being developed—“An AR-15,” he said. After describing how the demonstrator had obliterated a line of targets placed some distance away, Fred quipped, “It was a weapon of mass destruction. And it should be outlawed!”
I didn’t have to ask about Fred’s politics. For some 20 years after Senator Wellstone died, Fred and his wife had maintained a small yard sign bearing the Democrat’s famous line, “We all do better when we all do better.” In the yard currently is what I call the local snow meter: a sign that reads, “THANK YOU/GOVERNOR/WALZ.” A couple of weeks ago, there’d been enough melt and settlement of earlier snow that “THANK YOU” was beginning to appear. Before Friday’s rain, you could see the top of “GOVERNOR” and after the rain began, “WALZ” was coming into view. (After Friday night’s snowstorm, the “meter” registered a snow level halfway through “THANK YOU.”)
Later in the conversation, Fred invited me for coffee sometime at his house. I explained my “bubble life” but told him I’d soon be getting my Covid booster and was champing at the bit to resume normal life. “Maybe if we could mask up, I could take you up on that—maybe next week.”
“Well,” said Fred, “I’m having a big Easter egg hunt for the neighborhood kids this Saturday, and I’d like to show you how the inside of my house has been prepared.”
“That would be great,” I said, “and it would be great to meet your wife.
It turns out that Fred is a recent widower. I felt bad, for now that I’d learned where he lived, I’d seen his wife outside in their yard many times over the years and had heard from neighbors over the years that she was a wonderful person. I’d seen Fred in the yard too, but though we’d greeted each other, I’d just never bothered to stop and introduce myself. I felt deep regret, which moved me to accept Fred’s generous offer.
We subsequently made arrangements for 3:00, Thursday afternoon. Before I could locate the doorbell button, Fred opened the front door to his gracious home. He greeted me with the smile to which I’d grown accustomed when crossing paths with him on neighborhood streets. (Cont.)
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
