Cliff: The Pied Piper
In my years with Cliff, I’ve seen this happen numerous times in
public places.
A tearful child will walk up to him and announce: “I can’t find my mommy.”
Cliff gets down on his knee and says, “We’ll find her.” Then he takes that small hand and looks for the information counter or customer service. Cliff stays right there, holding on until the mother arrives.
He never knows these children. He doesn’t wear an official badge.
They see him and know he’s the guy. It’s some kind of Pied Piper thing, a nameless but constant magnet to seekers.
Shortly after we moved here, he tackled the picket fence. I call it the infinity fence because he can never get to the end of it. There’s always one more rotten rail or picket to replace. No matter how long he paints, there’s a missed edge that requires attention.
One afternoon a local we didn’t know stopped by as Cliff struggled with the gate. “Need a hand?” he asked. Cliff asked, “What would I owe you?”
“Nothing,” Darrell said. “Consider it your Welcome to Milan gift.”
He’s returned several times to help with difficulties that crop up in an old house.
He was here once to relocate two doors, but it ended up involving mice. I spotted their droppings under the kitchen sink while Cliff was on a road trip with a friend from college, so I asked Darrell’s advice.
“Set some traps and get rid of them,” he said casually and turned to leave.
“I don’t want them to die,” I replied, the tears starting.
He turned back and changed his tone. “Now, Karen, I know you write children’s books and want to make friends with the mice, but that can’t happen. You don’t want them to settle in and have babies.”
When Cliff returned, he headed for the hardware store and bought a “live trap” to lure them in with food. Its doors would snap shut so he could release them unharmed.
It worked like a charm.
When we reported our successes to Darrell, he slyly asked, “Are you marking them? It might be the same darned mouse over and over.”
When Cliff related all this to our daughter Maggie and how he took them to the creek at the bottom of the hill, she was amused and created a scenario about their encampment in the woods.
“Look! It’s Aunt Louise come home to us!” the mice would shout, leaping up from their tiny campfire to greet the relative scampering toward them.
“Who’s that man?” they’d ask.
“I don’t know, but he has Ritz crackers!” Aunt Louise would explain to a chorus of ooohs. “Under his sink is a cottage where you can get peanut butter. You reach for it, and the doors shut tight so you can eat in peace and get a good night’s sleep.”
They nod enviously.
“Then he wakes you up in the morning and carries you home!”
They’d ask how to find this storybook place.
“I’m not sure, but you have to climb that hill,” she’d reply.
I don’t know if mice distinguish north from south, but they could end up at another house instead. The owners might have Ritz crackers and peanut butter.
But they won’t have Cliff to help them find their way back home.
