Mr. Stanley was a plump, robust and mild mannered nondescript man of sixty-seven years old, who was our neighbor when I was growing up on Cayuga Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota in the late 1950s, who had worked somewhere in the city for the railroad. He retired in 1959; I was twelve years old then. He bought himself a brand new shinny automobile, a Rambler. I’d visit him now and then, briefly hanging my hands and head over the wired fence my grandfather had constructed between them and us. He lived with his wife Anglia, and had a son, perhaps in his late twenties back then. He always wore his old railroad cloths, clean but old-blue jean trousers, with those straps that are attached to that go over and around ones shoulders, also he wore a blue jacket-railroad style, and a variety of hats, more like caps, railroad genre.

At first I wondered why he did what he did, wearing day after day that same old clothing (although I realized he was never going to a fashion show)-he even showed me once his railroad watch, it was gold plated, I think he said he worked for railroad some thirty-seven years, said, “This is what you get after some many years, not much but better than nothing.” I got used to seeing him in those railroad duds (as we called clothing back then), even got used to those caps of his. He always looked he same, then one day he came back up the driveway to his house, parked a new 1959 Rambler in front of his house-a light creamy brown color to it, a little chrome on the sides of the car. After that first year, summer to summer, he knew that car pretty well; he could recognize a dirty spot on it at twenty-feet, with one quick glance, and he carried a rag in his railroad trousers, to wipe clean any blemish he may spot.

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