Salem Avenue—a memory of a hazy day ghost

The streets of my childhood are there—narrower, shabbier, smaller, but still
there—and in a way, I’m still there too—trying to make sense of the day I saw my
ghost.

It began with rain, the slow, drizzling kind that lasts all day and gets inside your
mind. I can still hear the mournful dirge of the foghorn and see the mist rising from
the grates.

It was a dark day when the yellow globes of the schoolroom stood like pale moons
in darkened windows. Everything felt huddled and close. The smell of woolen
mittens steaming on radiators nauseated me along with the chanting of prayers and
whispered responses.

Mother Viola was a blur—a misshapen, elongated piano keyboard melting into the
lectern like a Salvador Dali clock. The metronome ticked back and forth. The rubber
tipped pointer danced over bars and staves and treble clefs—it was dizzying and
maddening and suffocating.

Recess came and went—it was too wet to go outside. By eleven, we were spelling
and at half-past started to read a story about a boy living in a river valley. At two
minutes to Noon, books were put away and we stood again and prayed and then
lined up in rows waiting for the bell to sound our release.

I walked home morosely. I knew I couldn’t go back—at least, not that day, but I had
no plan. For lunch, I had tomato soup and salmon paddies—I remembered it was
Friday. On the holy calendar, the fish marked today’s square.

The afternoons were shorter—only two hours, but an eternity on such a day as this.
I decided to take my raincoat and boots, though the walk was short. I already had
made up my mind that my feet would take me in a different direction and I had need
of rain gear.

Once outside, I turned the corner and headed in the opposite direction, past the park
toward Salem Avenue. Once out of sight of the house, my pace slowed. I stopped to
watch the rainwater coursing down the gutters. I made a dam of leaves to hold back
the flow and then broke it with the toe of my boot and watched the tidal wave sweep
down toward the sewer.

“Don’t play in the gutters,” my mother would warn, “ you might catch Diphtheria.”
I decided I would chance the possibility and made a Popsicle boat and watched it
navigate the narrow rapids before plunging into the Niagara Falls of the sewer.

I walked on. My eyes cast downward took note of the ancient sidewalks. Each
section had an impress of the Paving Company’s name and the date the walk was
laid. I saw 1928, then turned the corner and saw 1918. Ahead an older section of
darkened stone promised an earlier date—1910.

I was in awe. Whether it was the rain or the unhurried atmosphere of the afternoon,
I couldn’t be sure, but somehow I could almost sense the era engraved in that walk. I
imagined men in top hats and capes and women in long dresses.

It was then I saw him. A hazy wraith, curling like a swirl of mist, gradually taking
form. He emerged from the park gaining substance with each passing second. I saw
he was dressed in baggy brown pants, with a matching jacket and peaked cap. He
reminded me vaguely of Andy Capp from the cartoon pages.

I watched as he was bent performing a task. I was afraid to move or even breathe.
He turned slightly and I could see he had a half-broom and was sweeping debris
from the walk into a burlap bag fitted with a metal dustpan edge. I watched him
meticulously sweep from one end of the walk to the corner and around. I never saw
him disappear, but I knew or sensed that if I walked down the block and peered
along the Avenue, he’d be gone.

I never told anyone about what I saw that hazy day—some things are better left
unsaid, kept to oneself and pondered over only when the mood overtakes. But
ironically, a few years later my father and I were sitting on our old wooden porch
watching the rain when he mentioned the local legend of the street cleaner.

“Whenever it rains, they say he appears. Seems back at the end of the First World
War, he was working hard to bring his wife over from Italy. Poor devil caught the
Spanish Flu, but kept on working—died right in the street, they say.”

Now I don’t know if there are such things, but I know what I saw. All I know is that
whenever it’s rainy and a little hazy, I get the urge to go back and revisit those streets
and perhaps catch a glimpse of that old street cleaner. I never do though—some
things are better left unsaid and kept to oneself and pondered over only when the
mood overtakes.