Potato Sack Boy

I cannot remember meeting Les. I had been there three years and as I thought back through all my memories he was just there everyday that I had been working. That winter we had been showing up at the center at the same time, always discussing the weather on the way in. The ice on the ground, the layer of salt that clung crisp on the tires of our cars, the heat bill, were all reoccuring themes of these morning conversations. We would part ways him going into the Senior Citizens program and me to my office.

I would come to the senior program half hour before lunch to play cards with one of the seniors, Mervin. We had a three year ongoing competion of Kings in the Corner. Mervin had actually taught me how to play again years ago when I was first there. And Mervin continued to teach me as he would change rules from time to time. We sat first table at the front of the room. Les never playing, but always calling out Mervin. "That's not how you use to play." Les just looked on, a dedicated fan that did not pick sides. Though he also never played stating he had given up cards years ago, but I never asked why. Mervin and I took turns dealing the oversized cards with their faded colors and bent corners. Les,the spectator, would make his only contribution to the game right at the beginning as he would call out the colors of the first four cards dealt. Saying "three blacks ones and one red one" or "two black ones and two reds ones" or "all red ones." It was how every game began of what could been an astounding five hundred games or more over the years if someone were counting.

Mervin was not much of a talker during the game, so Les and I would have conversations. Three years worth of conversations and now I find myself pushing and poking through my memories to remember. The mornings were our weather conversations, of course we were outside at the time, but the noon conversations were more. I sat, thinking, reflecting. It is like I have to prove I knew him, prove everything that happened, prove he existed.

Les was born in Kentucky and grew up there. I never asked why or when he moved to Indianapolis, but now I wondered. He would talk of a childhood, during a simpler time, a time when his family did not have much money. Discussing how games were different and children were different. "I had only one pair of overalls when I was young" he shared one day. "And when my sister would wash them I would wear a potato sack." I sat in that moment and I sit now imagining the coarse burlap against bare skin. The itchiness as it rubbed with every move. Cutting a hole in the top for his head and two holes in the side for arms. Les, a little boy, wearing a sack for hours as his overalls slowly dried on a line. The potato sack boy. Now I sang the words in my head as a child's nursery rhythm. "The potato sack boy, potato sack boy, didn't own a toy, but was still full of joy, still full of joy..."

It did not seem fair that Les had made it right up to the end of winter, through the cold and the snow, and missed the sun and warmth that quickly followed. I felt he was owed at least one pleasant day, but I guess in the end we are owed nothing. His body was returned to Kentucky to be buried, the funeral was too far to attend, though I considered it several times that week. There was no obituary in the local papers. I found myself surfing the internet to find anything about his death. I was searching for one last connection with him. I found a write up on the funeral homes website. I was hoping for answers, for information about his time in the military, at his job, when he moved here...but my questions went unanswered. And I was not owed this information. I had plenty of time to find it out, but never did. Three surviving sisters, all living in Kentucky, day and time of the funeral was all I found in a brief synopsis. Too brief. A life reduced to a paragraph with a picture of Les smiling above of it. I sat in the sun, thinking of the potato sack boy. I sat guessing which of the three sisters gave him the potato sack to wear. And as I sat still pondering the cards were dealt.."three black ones and one read one."