Brownie

Brownie

By Jay

Okay, this is not about the scrumptious sweets that your grandmother baked to perfection.  Though by the title you might be thinking right now about chocolate stained teeth and a gooey center, this particular Brownie was not an edible thing at all.  That is, unless you are a cannibal.  It is about a man. 

Yes, I once knew a man named “Brownie”.  At least, that’s what everyone called him.  I never knew his real name though I’m sure he had one.  He was my next door neighbor  --  an old, balding man with red cheeks who waved to us from various places in his front yard when I was a child.  Now when I say next door neighbor, I mean down the street.  We couldn’t actually see his green house from ours.  We lived in a small New England town out in the country, and from July, 1973 – May, 1979 I saw Brownie nearly every day of my life.  Next to my parents and my two brothers, Brownie was the one person I saw the most often.  I’d be on the school bus, and I’d see Brownie out in his front yard watering the flowers.  Or we’d be driving by and my father would say, “IT’S BROWNIE” as if we didn’t know who he was even though we knew full well, it was indeed, Brownie.  Sometimes, he would say, “WAVE TO BROWNIE” or simply, “LOOK, IT’S BROWNIE.”  The name Brownie took on a majestic air.  Even the thought of Brownie commanded respect though I knew nothing about him.  In my eyes, as well as my brother’s, he was a giant who was on par with the founding fathers, Neil Armstrong, and Sir Edmund Hillary.  He was “BROWNIE” as my parents would say as we waved to him from the car.  And that was enough.  He was an elusive and mysterious figure.  I don’t believe I ever actually met him.  He never came over to the house, and I don’t recall ever going to his except for Halloween.  But it was always his wife who answered the door, a kind elderly woman who graciously dropped some candy in our bags every October 31.  I remember peering inside the house to see what I could see, but it was always dimly lit.  One Halloween, I remember seeing Brownie sitting in a chair, or at least half of him in the shadowy background, his legs crossed.  He may have been holding a magazine or a book, or he may have been taking a nap.  I don’t know.  But I do know that it was quiet.  And I do know that it was an awesome experience to be in the presence of Brownie even if we were just standing in his doorway. 

But for the most part, I remember seeing Brownie in his front yard.  This was Brownie’s domain, Brownie’s element…  Sometimes, he’d be puttering with his flowers.  Sometimes, I’d see him with a spade or shovel in his hand.  Sometimes, he’d be holding some unrecognizable object, and he’d be walking with it.  To where and for what reason, I never knew.  And sometimes…  sometimes, he just appeared to be standing there as if his sole purpose was to stand in his yard and wave to me as I rode by on my bike.  And yes, he waved…  all the time.  I remember quite often he wore a plain white t-shirt in the summer, and a thick coat and muffler in the winter.  But always the arm would raise, and I could see from a distance his red cheeks on a faceless body, a body which to me still has no face, for I only ever saw him from a position of forty yards or more though I knew that sometimes this congenial spirit was smiling. 

And then we moved, and I never saw Brownie again.  There were no more waves.  There were no more “IT’S BROWNIE” from my father or mother.  There were no more sights of Brownie in his yard in all kinds of weather doing what he did best, minding his own business and enjoying the peace and solitude of New England country life.  When we moved, I was ten years old.  Later on, I heard that Brownie had either died or moved or gone off to an old age home…  These reports were given to me so long ago that I can’t say for sure where I heard this information or if, indeed, I heard it at all.  But I do know one thing.  When I passed by the house ten or so years later, Brownie was no longer in his yard.  Most assuredly, Brownie no longer lived there.  There was something that didn’t seem right about the place.   It just didn’t have the Brownie feel to it.

And so, the thought of Brownie was pushed back in my mind.   And as the years passed and I moved to a different part of the country, a bustling city where I fell into the chaos of adult life, Brownie was all but forgotten.  That is, until last Friday.  Brownie exploded into my life once again, nearly four decades since I had seen his last wave. 

Turning forty-four on September 3^rd, I was given a Barnes and Noble Gift Certificate (a classic Craig and Jay gift) from my younger brother and my niece.  Being sentimental and a bit curious, I decided to spend it on purchasing a pictorial book of my old home town from the “Images of America” series.  As soon as I opened up the package, I began devouring the contents, my bookish myopic eyes peering with delight at all the familiar images from a past that had died long ago.  Much to my surprise, I found myself staring at a picture of an old baseball team from 1916.  The old black and white photo showed thirteen men and boys staring at me expressionlessly through the obscurity of decades.  In the front row, two were sitting on the ground indian style.  In the second row, five guys were sitting on a bench or chairs (I can’t tell which) and another was squatting.  And in the back row, most certainly the best of the best,  the last five were standing there with their arms folded, glaring at the camera as if defying anyone to get in their way on the all-American diamond.  But it was the player standing on the far left of the photo that commanded my attention.  Fortunately, the players were named.  All of them had a first and a last name as normal people should.  All that is except the player on the far left, who stood staring at me from nearly a century in the past  --  muscular arms folded, eyes squinting in the sun  --  quiet but commanding presence  --  no question in my mind that he was the captain of the team  --  as if he knew what it was all about.  The name of the player was “Brownie”.  No first name.  No last name.  Just, “Brownie”. 

Could it be?  Could this young man, who looked like he could spank Ty Cobb and send him squealing home to his mother, be the Brownie?  Could this be the same old man with the balding head and the cherry cheeks who waved to me nearly every day for six years of my life?

I began doing the math in my head to see if it would add up.  I knew Brownie was old, but was he this old?  The photo was from 1916.  The Brownie I knew was an old man when I was in my first decade of existence 1973-1979.  If Brownie was eighteen years old in the picture, this would have put his birth about 1898 or so.  He was certainly a young man, perhaps even younger than eighteen.  Even if we were to put his age at twenty in 1916, or sixteen in 1916, this would have put Brownie in his late seventies to early eighties in the years that I knew him.  Definitely conceivable.  Because I never actually saw Brownie’s face up close, and because I was so young myself, he could very well have been that old.  Everyone over sixty may as well be ninety to a child of five or six, or even ten. 

I have no way of knowing for sure whether the Christy Mathewson look-alike in the photo was my old next door neighbor.  Something tells me though that they are one and the same  --  a certain reserved intensity in the face, perhaps  --  something I seemed to understand about the man.  Maybe it’s just the ideal of a legendary figure whose name “Brownie” at one time in my mind’s eye, dwarfed the greatest of American heroes, a time in my life when one has heroes, where the fakers and the letdowns of the world have no business.  I’m quite sure it is him, who has come back to me through the pages of time, telling me that it’s okay to have these heroes again and that myths are real and that everything you imagined in your childhood is true.  Cynics beware.  The message is clear.  Brownie is waving once more, except this time…  I can see him smiling…  And I know that giants still roam the earth.

P.S. Brownie must have been injured as a player, cutting his promising career short.  Because if he had ever made it to the big leagues, Ty Cobb never would have had a chance in hell…