The Old Man II

“I never got passed middle school,” the old man said quietly, almost to himself. Then he seemed to realize I was staring at him because he got defensive. “It doesn’t mean I’m stupid, I’m just as smart as anyone who went through high school, I just had to help on the farm.”

“I would never have thought you were stupid,” I assured the old man. It was true; he was to dignified to be stupid.

“There are other types of knowledge other then what you learn in school,” the old man continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. I got the feeling that this was a sore subject with him and I imagined how he must feel in the modern society that expected everyone to go to college and I felt sorry for me. I felt bad for myself for not having finished college and here this man had received even less of an education then I had and he had survived.

I poured the old man his coffee and he went and sat down in his usual seat. I lingered a little around his area when I washed tables but he chose not to renew our conversation, he seemed completely wrapped up in his own world like he had been every other day I had ever seen him. I was afraid that I had offended him but thinking back on our conversation I couldn’t think of anything that I could have said that would have offended him so I dismissed that idea.

It was again over coffee that our next conversation came, and that wasn’t until a couple of weeks later when again we didn’t have any coffee already made. We had exchanged polite hellos a couple of times before that but we hadn’t really talked again until this point. It was another slow time, the old people usually come in during the slow times, when everyone else on earth is working or busy, they come out of the cracks of the world and have their hours of glory. I was leaning on the counter when he came in and I instantly put the coffee pot on, I didn’t even have to wait for his order anymore, it was always the same thing, day after day.

As he searched his pockets for change the old man brushed his head against the wall and his hat fell to the floor. He scrambled to pick it up as quickly as he could but he couldn’t bend low enough to scoop it off the ground. I saw his plight and went around the counter and got it for him. I handed it to him respectfully and he took it and shoved it back on his head. It was an embarrassing moment for the proud old man, I could tell by the way he looked at me, inspecting me for a hint of ridicule, but I felt no scorn for the old man and so he shrugged a bit and went to his table. Other then that event I thought it was going to be like any other day but in the time between the hat falling and me bringing him his coffee he seemed to have become talkative.

“I always wear this hat,” he commented, “every day, no matter what weather.” I looked at the battered, cracked, white leather and I believed him. I nodded my agreement and told him that I had noticed as much.

“It was the last thing my brother ever gave me,” the old man explained to me, touching the hat brim gently. “He went to war, long before you were born, and right before he left he put the hat on my head and told me to look after it for him. He never came back. I couldn’t have been more then eight at the time,” he added wistfully and I stared at the hat. The old man was over eighty in my estimation and if he was only eight when he got the hat it seemed like something of the distant past that belonged in a museum to my skewed perception.

To be continued...