In Search of 49th Street

A Novel by Marshall Widman

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

It was in April of 1995 when Sonny got his first glimpse of his future; a future trying to hold off the death struggle that surely awaited him. Along with his troubling diagnosis came stern advice from his doctor, Jon Greenberg; “Stay home, get a grip on yourself and work with the medical team to find ways to access the damage.” Advice Sonny quickly dismissed.

In this story narrated by Sonny’s best friend Bud Lieberman, Sonny told Bud “I’ll worry about treatment later, a few days or weeks won’t matter. First I must go to Omaha and visit my old neighborhood and boyhood home. I’ve wanted to spend some time there and now I must go.”

Bud reminded Sonny what the doctor told him, “Not now!” Sonny said.

“I want to go home!” Sonny sternly told Bud; “Sorry Bud. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“You will have time for Omaha later.” I calmly responded. “But now stay here and work with Doctor Greenberg.”

“I’m going Bud, that’s all there is to it. But before I leave, I need to share a few details with you.”

“I’m listening.” Bud answered with a puzzled look.

Sonny asked me to keep his diagnosis a secret from their friends. We were part of a group of ten or so guys who have been friends basically since elementary school. They have been friends so long that I knew it was going to be hard to keep it a secret.

Sonny had another request; he disclosed the existence of a deeply personal manuscript he had been working on. The manuscript contained the good, the bad and the ugly of his life and chapters that he was not particularly proud of. Sonny didn’t want the existence of this manuscript revealed to anyone and especially his family until after his death.

“Where is the manuscript now?” I asked.

“Most of the manuscript is in storage. I’m still working on the final chapters.”

“Will I get to see it?” Bud asked.

“Yes, I will figure out how and when but you will get to see it.”

So ruling against the advice to stay home, Sonny left the next morning and drove 200 miles north. Weaving his way through the familiar streets of Omaha, his journey ended at the intersection of 49^th Street and Glenshee Boulevard. Facing the wrong way, he parked in front of his boyhood home, the only place on Earth where he could truly say he was home again.

Just before putting his car in PARK, he noticed a street sweeper working its way up 49^th Street. “I’ll probably have to move my car.” He thought until the sweeper turned east on Decatur Street.

He rolled down his driver’s window, turned off the radio, reclined back in his seat and took in a deep breath. Maybe for the first time in his life he appreciated the birds whistling in the skies above his house. He rarely appreciated the sights and sounds of nature before.

Sonny also noticed the wind rustling through the high arching canopy of leaves over 49^th Street. He detected whispers and sounds that mimicked the laughter and voices from his past; each sound conjured up visions of his mother, father, siblings and friends right before his very eyes.

Sonny spent the next few hours daydreaming about this friends and family, never giving a thought as to why a stranger with out-of-state plates, sitting in this quaint neighborhood, would alert any of the neighbors as to who he was and what was he doing there. After all, this was his neighborhood; well it used to be.

The block basically had a familiar look but with subtle differences. Neighborhoods do change and houses get painted, and then painted again. Siding gets installed, shutters are mounted or removed and windows get replaced. Changes occur at a snail’s pace but over a period of time, change is noticeable.

One constant he fondly remembered was the weathervane that sat at the apex of Sergeant Fred Lenin’s roof; his next door neighbor. The kids in the neighborhood affectionately called him Sgt. Fred. Omaha Police Sergeant Lenin proudly kept it painted red, white, and blue until his untimely death in 1979.

Now 35 years later the carefully painted weathervane that Sgt. Fred took such pride has turned to rust. Interestingly enough, the old propeller still turned, and the weathervane still faced into the wind. Sonny doubted that anyone paid attention to it anymore. It was an important tool when Sergeant Fred installed it back in 1951 before most homes had television. Weathervanes helped predict the weather based on the wind direction. A north wind might indicate cooler temperatures while a south wind could bring warmer weather. From the east it could mean stormy weather as the cold and warm fronts collide.

Omaha in the ‘50s was a small town, not as small as the fictional town of Lake Woebegone of Garrison Keillor fame, but not a large city either. Omaha was a city of neighborhoods when neighborhoods meant something.

Neighborhoods, as Sonny remembers them, were stable villages within cities where families lived most of their lives. Families passed down their homes and history from parent to child through several generations, many of whom were born in those houses.

The neighbors back in the day knew and interacted with each other almost on a daily basis - air conditioners and electric garage door openers, unheard of in neighborhoods like his, helped shut down the last links between neighbors as people could now drive right into their garage without having to get out of the car and open the garage door by hand. As the use of air conditioners began to replace window fans, people were more inclined to stay indoors.

In the days before there were preservatives in food, families got their milk and bread delivered to their doorsteps several times a week.

One happy game the kids played was stealing chunks of ice from the back of the Robert’s Dairy truck on hot summer days. Of course, the milkmen knew what they were doing and only pretended to chase them off. The Omar Man followed in his delivery truck with breads and pastries. Sonny’s favorite treat was the Hostess Cupcakes, two swirl-top cream filled cupcakes for 6 cents.

He couldn’t explain the forces that kept him sitting there in his car, but the best memories lingered on. One year stood out above all others, the summer of 1958, the year he turned 13.

Sonny was tall for his age. Even in kindergarten he stood out. This trend continued until high school. A funny thing happened on the way to being tall; he stopped growing. The rest of the class caught up with him by their sophomore year.

More memories emerged from the deepest corners of his mind and each one bombarded him like a hail of bullets aiming for his attention.

“Suddenly I sensed a shadow shrouding over my car.” He told his friend Bud when he returned from Omaha. “Something had come between the afternoon sun and my car.”

“Even though I was deep in thought, a soft knock on my passenger side window startled me back to reality. I vaguely heard the muffled sounds coming from somewhere.”

“I turned to my right, rolled down the window, and saw a woman bending over at the waist with her hands resting on her knees peering in at me.”

“I noticed that she was not wearing a wedding ring. That was the second thing I noticed when meeting a woman. Her face was attractive but frightfully thin and her smile appeared natural. Something in her eyes betrayed that alluring smile. I could feel some strong emotions behind her voice.”

“She was wearing a white buttoned down long-sleeved shirt that hung on her like a kid dressing up in her dad’s clothes. The shirt was tucked into a pair of loosely fitting jeans. On her left wrist was a man’s stainless steel oversized chronograph watch with a metal band that hung loosely like a bracelet.

“I asked her to repeat herself.”

She said, “I have noticed you parked here for some time and wondered if you knew that your engine was still running.”

“Oh, no I didn’t. Thank you.” He said. “It’s been running this whole time? I totally lost track of time. My mind has been a thousand miles away.”

Sonny told her that he used to live in that house across the street a long time ago.

She then leaned forward resting her elbows on his car door with her head poking through the open window and smiled. “I’m Carol Ann, I live across the street.”

“I’m Sonny Alport.”

“Is that your real name?” She asked.

“No, a nickname; my first name is Stanley.”

“Do you live around here?” Carol Ann asked

“Kansas City, well a suburb of Kansas City.”

“Nice to meet you Sonny, welcome home.”

“Welcome home?” How could she know? “Thank you for saying that; that’s exactly what I needed to hear; someone welcoming me home. That is what I’m doing here; trying to go home again.”

“I hope your voyage is a safe one.” Carol Ann said.

“I was so wrapped up in thought that I also forgot that I picked up this sandwich from Runza Hut, do you want half?”

“Thank you but no.” She said with a laugh.

“Ok, I’m not that hungry I’ll just throw it away.”

“Don’t waste it, let’s sit on my front porch and I’ll eat the other half of the sandwiches; like a picnic?”

“Good idea.”

Sonny followed Carol Ann up her long steps to her front porch where Sonny noticed two rocking chairs in exactly the same place where the Dugan’s, the original owner’s, rocking chairs had been. For an instant he wondered if those could be the same chairs but no, they could not be the same chairs and shook off the thought as they took their seats across from one another.

Bud remembers Sonny was just under six-feet tall in his late thirties. He had thinning brown hair hidden with a subtle comb-over. He told me his once 33” waist was now somewhere north of 35”. He got the nickname Sonny when his parents brought him home from the hospital on a bright sunny morning after a solid week of overcast skies.

“Since his diagnosis,” Bud wrote, “the two of us dwelled quite often on our childhood and how we had no idea what lay ahead in our lives. We may have experience the loss of a favorite pet, but we never had a clue that the immutable laws of nature in anyway applied to us.”

A few months ago, Sonny might have listed his most valuable assets as his house, his business, his antique car, and his sports collection. Now, since the reality of his situation has become clear, none of those material possessions mattered to him any longer. Time became his most valuable asset.

So six years after his diagnosis, on June 21^st, 2001, his 46^th birthday, Sonny Alport ran out of that most valuable commodity.

Sonny’s manuscript was inspired by events beginning with the summer of 1958, when he was thirteen years old, and continued until his disease depleted his ability to continue. In it he recounts his travels down the rabbit hole of memories which includes trying to recapture fragments of his youth but ends in an encounter with ghosts hidden in the furthest corners of his mind.

There are three deaths:

The first is when the body ceases to function.

The second is when the body is consigned to the grave.

The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Dr. David Eagleman, Neuroscientist