Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 28, 1994 TAG: 9408180018
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Oh, he could recite all the scores, stats and snippets from every high-school basketball and football team dating back to the '40s in my small Ohio town. He could tell you who left town, which college they went to, who was married to whom and which team everyone in the county played for in high school.
A simple man known simply as Milo. I never even knew his last name until my mom sent his obituary last week, clipped from the hometown newspaper I used to deliver as a kid.
I can picture him walking down our street past our house. I can see our paths crossing as I walked home from elementary school, as I bicycled through the neighborhood delivering newspapers in junior high, as I drove to my life-guarding job during summers home from college.
I can see his limp, his buzz haircut, his baggy pants dragging lightly on the ground. I can hear him humming - loud enough that you could tell when he was nearby, but muddled enough that you couldn't make out his tune.
I can remember the way the kids all stared and smirked.
``Milo, zip up your fly!''
``Here comes Milo - he left his teeth at home today.''
``Milo, you're sooooooo GROSS!!''
And I can imagine what it must have been like 10 years ago, when one kid turned those words into action and talked his buddies into helping him beat Milo up.
Milo refused to identify his attackers.
I felt guilty reading Milo's obit. Guilty, not because I'd ever lifted a finger at him or taunted him in any way. But guilty for the things I let peer pressure keep me from doing - from nodding hello, from smiling, from stopping just once on my paper route and saying, ``Hey, Milo, how are ya today? ... Weren't those Hillclimbers something on the field last Friday night?''
Milo was our town character. And though he never let on that he knew just how cruel a small town could be, he knew better than anyone.
In small towns, people aren't allowed to be different.
Sure, you can leave home without locking your doors. And you can spend two hours shopping at Troutwine's Family Grocers - you know everyone you see (and if you see someone you don't know, you stop your friend the next cart over to discuss the stranger in question).
After college, I lived in a city with a million-plus population. I never left home without my map, my neighbors were strangers, and I rarely ran into anyone I knew at the Kroger Super Store.
I'm sure I saw plenty of characters like Milo - a little down and out, maybe even a little bit crazy - but I don't recall ever noticing them.
Since moving to Roanoke five years ago, I've gotten married and had a baby. Occasionally I get restless and wonder: Do I like my job, my neighborhood, my place in the community? Would I prefer a small town, where I can be a trout in a pond? Would I prefer a big city, where I can be a minnow in a lake?
And what does a person really gain by leaving Roanoke, where people swim along at varying degrees of speed and size; where sometimes you spend 30 minutes shopping at Harris Teeter, where sometimes you spend an hour?
I thought about Milo and this sense of community the other day when my friend Ernie described a scene he'd witnessed involving the short, red-haired woman named PeeWee who frequently sits on the bench in front of Revco downtown.
PeeWee, who looks to be around 70, was sitting alone on the bench when one of her friends, a 5-feet-2 man riding a banana-seat bike and wearing lizard-skin cowboy boots, came up to join her.
``They sat there in silence for a while, and then he laughed,'' my friend told me. ``Then she pulled out a candy bar, and they shared it. A few minutes later they got up and walked down the street together, arm-in-arm.''
My friend was clearly moved by the scene, as was I when he described it to me, relishing every detail as if it were poetry on a page, as if it were theater come to life.
For now, I thought - at this particular time in my life anyway - Roanoke is just about right.
Beth Macy, whose column runs Thursdays, is a features department staff writer.
by CNB