AND IF YOU ASK ME

by Grayce Pitera

Every once in a while a writer becomes “blocked.” As you know, that’s the literary term for a temporary inability to place an acceptable thought on paper. Today I am a victim of an unexpected block. I write with my spirit, not my head; so sometimes if my emotions don’t kick in, I am at a loss for written words. So I am sitting here writing with no direction or clue where this column will take me, bringing my readers along for the ride.
Why does writer’s block happen? Thinking it through, I console myself by inventing reasons for my frustrating situation. Sometimes it may be the result of a distressing personal problem or negative effect of the simple day-to-day stress of coping with whatever life throws your way. That doesn’t fit my case.
Having your schedule become overloaded can cause a writer’s mind to fuzz up. I am just ending my eight-month busy time and my mind knows that. It looks forward to a few months sabbatical. It wants nothing more than to settle into my lush upholstered chair with a hot cup of tea, a good book and engulfing blanket, preferably the oversized one my mom crocheted especially for me. This could pertain to me.
Or it may be due to the fact that no stimulus has presented itself. Sometimes that is all it takes; a thought, sight or word and I am off writing eleven hundred words, no problem.
Let me give you a good example of a stimulus. For instance, I can be driving down Route 206 and see three similar signs one after another. Suddenly, I remember the Burma Shave signs that consisted of planted consecutive mini signs, each carrying a single word or phrase to make up a complete thought.
From there my thoughts roam to the curious junkyard on the right hand side going north, where a man lived in a shanty type structure. He staked his territory with a chain link fence on which he hung numerous warning signs implying that the trespasser would come to a gory end if he even stepped onto his property. How that could happen, I don’t know because he kept his gates securely locked with a heavy chain and pad lock, so big that I didn’t have to look twice to see it.
The stimulus theory is kicking in. I can feel a column at hand.
This strange man’s obsession was painting long messages on huge pieces of plywood that he initially painted white. They were mostly warnings of humanity coming to a terrible end, justifying them with Bible passages.
As I look back, some of his messages have come to pass. That is a scary thought, and it’s forcing me to shake my head and move on to happier things, like the kinds of junk I saw peering through his wire fencing.
There was a huge sleigh that caught my eye when I was about fifteen. It was constructed of metal and meant to be horse drawn. I imagined all the people who rode in those seats, laughing and singing while on their way to some gala ball. Now, there it was in the junkyard heap suffering an indignity its maker never imagined.
And there it sat as I passed by each week on my family’s drive to Edgewater Park to visit my newly married sister, Jo. It was still there when I drove to and from Fairleigh Dickinson University a few years later. When I moved on to my internship at Holy Name Hospital, I craned my neck in search of that sleigh as I implored Dan, who was in dental school by then, to slow down. He had grown accustomed to my admiration of the graceful lines of the blades that curled up its back in an exaggerated style.
Dan and I were married in 1960. We lived in Hackensack, which meant our Route 206 jaunt would still be a part of my life. Amazingly, the junk kept right on piling up in that yard. There were tire rims, metal bakers’ racks, car parts and even a few cars with their engines exposed. Still, I was able to catch a glimpse of my beloved sleigh, mostly the back flare of its blades, by then all covered with rust as a result of corrosion.
Eventually, we moved to Cape Cod where Dan was stationed for his three year US Air Force duty. My trek home, although only twice a year at the most, still prevailed on Dan to slow down when he passed the “crazy man’s junkyard.” I was always happy to see the now disappearing sleigh blades and sad that the sleigh was dying a prolonged, painful death. However, that was life and we moved on.
Dan was discharged right after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; so my Route 206 trips were cut to occasional visits to my sister’s Burlington County home. They were fewer when my two children came along, keeping me busy at home. Still, old habits die hard.
Whenever the whim moved me, I packed up the kids and headed out to Jo’s for the day. Now with me at the wheel, I stopped at the junkyard fence and crept along the shoulder of the highway as all three of us marveled at the new junk pieces by now strewn-over acres of ground. The sleigh was miraculously still there in its place, a bit caved in, but still struggling to stay proudly erect as a monument to old world craftsmanship. I was mindful of the “Stay out” signs now scrawled in angry script by the aging owner.
It became a game for the kids to look for him. Back in the ‘60s, Danny insisted he saw a bearded man and that was the closest we came to a citing. Still, he would insist for me to slow down whenever I rode past the time-riddled junkyard, picking up the tradition where I had left off. I knew it was in good hands and I could still feed my own curiosity with each drive-by.
Well, as you can see, my block lifted even if only for the twenty minutes it took to write these thoughts. One word led to another and it disappeared as I spontaneously remembered a man who exercised his right to live his own lifestyle when it was not the fashionable thing to do. Delving further, I remembered the sadness I felt when weeds took over his junkyard. One day I drove by and it was being demolished, soon after I read a newspaper article of the man and his unusual lifestyle, proclaiming an end to an era - an era when a man wanted to be left alone and the society around him granted him that privilege.
I remember his sleigh and assume that he received as much joy as I whenever he looked outside his hut and caught sight of it.