(Part 2 -- story of Pat Kidd)
Pat liked to go walking a couple of times a day; he and my dad took mostly the same route through the mall or in the neighborhood. They were a familiar sight on the street. People would talk to them. Of course, when Pat went out for a walk, it was more of a stroll. One problem was that he didn't see very well. His eyes didn't line up quite right, and he had trouble judging depth, and he was afraid of falling. As he got older, he became still more cautious; when he reached a curb and would have to step up or down, he would wait until he could hold on to somebody.
Pat might say, "Time for exercise," but he never stressed himself. He didn't push himself, and he had all the time in the world. Slowly he would move, and he tended to develop habits such as stopping for rest every block or so, and stopping to lean over and pull up his socks. After a walk, he would want a drink from the refrigerator, a "bubbly" as they called it. "Time for bubbly" would come twice a day. Pat would go to his favorite chair in the living room and pull the tab on the can and listen to the hiss, and sigh like he had worked all day, and relax and enjoy the reward of his labor. "Tired out. Workin' hard."
Pat had a wonderful sense of humor. He found other people humorous and would imitate them. Pat would feed on the emotions and the mannerisms of people around him, and would reflect those back. Esther Sanders, who came over to do housework for us, talked like a black woman because she was a black woman, and Pat would try to talk like her. "Pat," she would say, "you mockin' me." Pat would mock anyone. He loved to imitate the distinctive voice of his Aunt Martha calling her husband; "Bruce, would you bring me my sweater?" The more we would get tickled at Pat, the more he would pile it on: "Bruce!" Pat loved to tease. He would say, "Mama, short legs," and an impish grin would come over his face, and Mama would say, "Now, Pat..." We'd start laughing and Pat would just keep laying it on: "Mama, short legs" over and over again until he had milked that one for all it was worth. Pat loved it when people laughed, even if they were laughing at him. Bill Gafford was a big man with the biggest laugh I have ever heard; he would come over, and when he would laugh, he would open his mouth way wide, and Pat just loved to imitate Bill - and his wife, Margaret, and daughter Linda. Pat would imitate his uncles too. Uncle Wilbur used to have a distinctive expression that he used frequently: "Oh shush!" Pat picked up on that and said it over and over.
Pat was a creature of habit. Early on in his life, he began making the distinctive sound that we called "gooking." No one else could replicate that sound, which he made by squeezing air through his throat and nose. Pat might gook at any time, but he tended to do it more when he got tired. He would gook before going to sleep; he might even start gooking on the phone while the rest of us were talking. We would tell him to stop, and maybe he would stop temporarily, but then he would start up again. Gooking was a habit that Pat continued for most of his 50 years, and it became a familiar sound to all who knew him. Sometimes kids would hear Pat gooking and would look funny and ask, "What's he doing?" We could only say, "He's gooking; it just something he does." Another habit of Pat was his rocking; he would rock back and forth, whether he was in a rocking chair or not. The other habit was "flipping." He would find some object such as a piece of paper or a bracelet and gently flip it back and forth. Other times he would not use an object but would flip his hand and fingers back and forth. Sometimes he flipped and rocked and gooked simultaneously.
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