APRIL 11, 2024 – (Cont.) Of all our neighbors, the first whom I observed close-up and most regularly was Judge Green, whose modest but well kempt home and lot were on the north side of our family’s original house and grounds at the corner of Rice and Green. As a little kid I assumed that Green Avenue was named after Judge Green, which in my view of the world meant Judge Green was famous. He didn’t act famous, however: he was down to earth, always friendly toward me, and never corrected me all the times I greeted him as, “Mr.” Green.
If there was ever a man with perfectly timed routines, it was Judge Green. Every weekday morning at about the same time Dad left for work at the same place the good judge worked—the courthouse a mile away—our neighbor with judicial standing and dignified gait exited the back of his house. If I was at play in our backyard, I’d run to the end of the picket fence that ran along a short section of our boundary and call out, “Hi, Mr. Green!” and he’d wave, smile and say, “Hi, Eric!” I’d then listen for the sound that I so enjoyed—his shiny wingtips crunching over the small fragments of loose concrete on the part of the driveway he crossed to reach his extra wide double-car garage with a built-in gardener’s quarters. I didn’t realize that the driveway was crumbling from a combination of age and imperfection. I thought it was a special brand of concrete applied intentionally to produce the crunching sound under foot. Our driveway was concrete too—and likewise pitted and crumbing—but for some reason, Dad’s wingtips didn’t produce the same sound when he walked on it, probably because every week Dad hosed off our driveway. Judge Green’s driveway was far too broad and long to be hosed or swept.
The amazing thing about Judge Green’s set-up was that he had an automatic garage door-opener. We’re talking the late 1950s when garage door-openers were largely unheard of, yet to my unending amazement not only did Judge Green have one, but so did Bob Ehlen, our neighbor diagonally across the street from us.
I loved to watch Judge Green’s garage door open all by itself and reveal the two familiar cars—Judge Green’s cream-colored late model Oldsmobile and the black humpback two-door Chrysler Luxury Liner that belonged to the very old man who lived on Benton Street on the other side of our block and who rented space in Judge Green’s garage. Every so often the geezer would stroll up Judge Green’s driveway running from Green Street back to the broad area in front of the garage. The old guy always wore a long, dark overcoat—or a well-pressed gray suit in warm weather months—and a black hat that looked like a cross between a fedora and a bowler. He smoked cigars, and I imagined that the plumes of smoke emanating from his mouth were somehow activated by his slow but deliberate walk. I never greeted him nor did he say “hi” to me, and I figured that because of that, he was some important personage with critical business to which to attend.
There was a Mrs. Green, but no one seemed to have much interaction with her, except Judge Green, on weekends, when we’d see the two of them exit the back of the house and a minute later, drive off together, waving at us as the Oldsmobile purred down the drive.
“Gerri,” as she was called, always looked so prim, proper, and stylish. Her exceptionally neat hats matched her exquisite outfits, and she handled her cigarettes with equal refinement. Every morning about the same time that Mr. Green appeared from the back of their house, “Gerri” would exit the front, where her ride was waiting. She didn’t have her own car, and we never saw her behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile.
Besides his clockwork crunch across the concrete at both ends of the workday, Judge Green followed another routine that fascinated me. Every Saturday of the grass-growing season, he’d mow his perfect front lawn. It was flat, square, and interrupted only by a walkway leading straight from the house to the curb. No trees or other obstacles prevented a straight-away lawn-mowing operation. At best it was a 10-minute chore.
Judge Green’s lawn mowing clothes were always the same: baggy trousers, which looked like used dress pants, and a sleeveless white undershirt. Often I could see intensity in his countenance and sweat gleaming on his forehead, which gave him quite a different aspect from his cordially authoritative appearance when he crunched the concrete with his wingtips to and from the garage.
What I liked most about watching Judge Green ply his thick, weedless lawn was the black and gold-colored lawnmower, and what I liked most about the lawnmower was the handle. It was different from all the other lawnmower handles in the neighborhood. Instead of having to push down on the handle and pivot the whole lawnmower around 180 degrees at the end of each row, Mr. Green simply flung the hand from one side to the opposite, made a small adjustment to move the mower over a couple of feet and cut the next row. This design increased efficiency and produced a perfectly striped effect over the thick lawn. I equated this special feature with the perfection in every other aspect of the lives of Judge and Gerri Green, most notably, the reliable timing of their morning departures and Gerri’s matching hats and suits, not to mention her well-executed cigarette smoking.
But even the perfect among us aren’t immune to trouble. Within too few years, Gerri died—of lung cancer, I believe. Judge Green subsequently remarried—into a family marred by tragedy, which was the murder-suicide of the woman’s daughter and son-in-law. The daughter’s daughter happened to be a classmate of my younger sister.
I don’t know what became of Judge Green. He was older than my parents. The last I heard he’d retired, moved, and faded away. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
