Dinner with Doc

Dinner with Doc

Philadelphia, PA
1960

My grandfather, Doc, died when I was about five years old. I don’t remember him but I have heard enough stories about him that I have some sense of him. And I have one flickering image that I am not sure if it happened or I made it up. So I ran the story by my father and he told me he doesn’t remember it after 40 years but it is very plausible.

It’s evening, probably Sunday evening, just after a large meal, and Doc is getting up to go home. Neither he nor my father has a car. So Doc took the bus to our house. Doc, my father, my older brother and I walk together to the bus stop, just around the corner. And we wait with Doc until the bus comes along. The door opens up and Doc puts one foot on the step and then pauses. He turns around and wishes us good night. He speaks to us in a tone that is very formal. Then he hoists himself up the steps, the door closes and my brother and I wave frantically as Doc stumbles down the aisle to his seat. He waves back and then the bus takes off. When the bus is clearly out of our view, we stop waving and we head home.

In my memory, there is a willow tree that shades the bus stop corner. That tree is so pronounced in my memory, and now, fifty years later, all willow tress remind me of Doc.