Here's an extremely quirkly little story for your Weekend entertainment, all about a man by the name of George. Similarities between someone either living or dead is purly coincidental and strange.
Once upon a time there was an old man who lived on a quiet, little street, in a far off neighbourhood, within a tiny town that sat right next to a set of rusty old train tracks, that hadn’t felt the tremendous weight of passing trains for many years.
This man’s name was George.George pretty much stuck to himself. He didn’t have many friends in the little town and had been estranged from his family for decades. George loved to sit on his little front porch and listen to the trains blow their whistle as they passed the crossing a few hundred yards from his front gate. Some days it was the only pleasure he took in life- watching the trains chug on by.
One sunny November day he walked out his front door, along the flagstone path to the front gate. He flipped the wrought iron latch and stepped onto the old sidewalk that had definitely seen better days.
“For cracky sakes!”- he muttered, “This sidewalk is disgusting!”
George looked down at the crumbling pavement and pushed a pebble- laying on the sidewalk, with the toe of his boot, into a huge hole in the cement that had formed right outside his gate.
“How long do I have to live with this hole right in front of my gate in this neighbourhood with crumbling sidewalks and big box stores?”
George didn’t appreciate the big box retailers that had built in the huge field opposite his little house near the tracks either.
“Dagnabbit!”- he said, slapping his leg with his left hand, “Why should I have to look at those big box stores as well as this huge hole right in the sidewalk outside my gate?”He flung open his gate and marched back up the pathway to his front door. Drawing a huge skeleton key from his pocket he unlocked the door and went inside. He crossed the hall and stood before a little walnut table where an old bakelite telephone sat, happily perched on a white doily- right in the middle of the tabletop. It was the only, single, solitary telephone he owned. At one time it had belonged to his Aunt Sicily- until she died and passed it on to him.
George picked up the receiver and phoned the small town’s public works department. The number was etched upon his mind for he had called to complain several times before. Not about the pothole in the sidewalk outside his gate but about the clouds of dust that had drifted across the road from the construction of the big box stores. The dust landed on his roses and his wicker furniture on his little front porch. It had made an awful mess.
After lodging a complaint, George- once again, locked his front door and headed down the flagstone path to the gate. He unlatched the gate and stepped out onto the sidewalk, being careful not to step into the huge hole.
Suddenly, he was aware of a loud whirring sound which drew closer to him as every second ticked by. The sound seemed to be right over his head. As he looked skyward, George was struck by something big and brown and very heavy.
A few minutes later the public works department called George’s phone to tell him a crew would be around in the morning to build him a new sidewalk. They apologized for their tardiness in recent years and for not repairing the sidewalk sooner seeing as George was a Senior Citizen of the little burg.
George would have been happy to see his sidewalk repaired. As happy as a guy could be living near the train tracks and a field full of big box stores!
The funeral was the following Thursday.
