Person Graf #7

　
In your lifetime you will meet lots of people. Some that you wish you hadn’t of met and others that you are glad that you had. I’m not talking about family members. I’m talking about the people that leave a lifetime impression in your soul. People that you look back onto as the years go by and you find yourself smiling while thinking about the memories that you shared with that person. His name was Keith “Red” Hale.

“Red” appeared to be old-looking when I was just a child. He had red hair that was sort of spiky in appearance, hazel eyes with gold wire rim glasses, and a weathered face. He was in his forties when I was about five years old. “Red” drove an old green Jeep with a white hard top. You could usually find him parked beside the post office talking to friends or napping as traffic went by. He wore old blue jeans that were always high watered; thus, showing his cream colored wool socks and his brown workboots with the cream colored sole. His boots had duct tape wrapped around the toes. Some people used to make fun of the way that he looked--a lot of people said that he was “loaded--and didn’t need to dress the way that he did.” He couldn’t read or write. One day when I was six I ran up to him and said…”Red, will you read this book to me?” He just smiled and couldn’t tell me why he couldn’t read to me. I remember thinking that it was odd that he didn’t read the book to me. Although he could not read or write, “Red” was the historian of the town. Oh, the stories that he could tell. He talked about the trains that used to come through town, the sawmill that got burned by the Indians up on the Mattawamkeag River, how there is a person in the cemetery that died when the Titanic went down, he would go around with a stick to guide new homeowners to where the vein of water was on their property so they could drill a well--and the list goes on and on.

“Red” helped my Dad when they built their house back in the 1970’s. He came around and watched as my house was being built--and seeded down my lawn. “Red” was in his seventies and still came around my husbands truck garage and went for rides with my dad in his pulp truck. My two children got to know “Red” and we would ride our bikes downtown and sit with him on the post office steps. My kids would listen to old stories that “Red” would tell them about me growing up-- and stories about our town. My kids have heard more knowledge about our town through the words of Keith “Red” Hale than they will ever hear from any textbook. “Red” passed away two years ago at the age of 76.