Did you ever characterize people by the looks on their faces? Yes? Well, brother you should be where I am right now.I'm sitting in the Hazard Herald office, directly across the street from the Mount Mary Hospital. Our big pane windows offer a luscious view that carries us right into a hospital room most any time we care to look up toward the second floor.
The faces that appear at the various windows on that floor are enough to floor a heavyweight champ. Mixed emotions are in evidence most any time of day. Patients glare out the windows and their facial contortions tell a story of anger, fear, sympathy - seeking, pain, satisfaction and just about every other category that a human being's feelings could be placed in.
Right now a lady is staring out the window. Her eyes have been fixed on passerbys for at least twenty minutes. She has her face for support and occasionally cranes her neck to follow some breakneck speedster who splits down High Street too fast. She invariably lets her little finger drift into her mouth and then chews away - as contented as Borden's Cow. She looks as though nothing could make her happy, so we know she isn't a prospective mother. She is sitting in an awkward position, so we know there are no fractured bones.
As a matter of fact, we will probably sit here all day and wonder what's wrong with her. 1948
I remember Les Wilson. I used to go to the Herald Office at that place before they moved. I like his words, his thoughts and I remember the view from Les' office as I passed there many times and looked up and once in a while someone would waive at a passerby. I guess when a patient had gotten well enough to be up and walk to the window they were sort of on the mend and watching for a known face to make their day a little less lonely.
ReplyDeleteOften, when I visited at Mt. Mary I noted people coming and going. Even at that time in my life I was "sizing" up those I saw, wondering who they were, where they were from, and guessing where they might be going. I used to sit downstairs and as I remember right off to the left of the waiting room was the room where they brought patients in. I used to sit and watch while Mom visited or whatever. I can see what he was doing and noting, for it was something I would do myself. I am still up to that a little. When I go to the Mall with my girls, I find me a nice place and I drop and settle in to "people watch", that is what I call it and I put faces in the crowds there with faces back home that I remembered. They say everyone has a twin and I think that might be true for I have seen people who looked so much like someone I knew that there were times my girls had to hold me to keep me from approaching them to ask, "Are you so and so from Hazard, Ky." They told me, "Mom, they don't do that around here and they will think you are a nut and have you put out." I just laughed and kept on my people watching and by doing so I met a lot of lonely people who wanted to talk and visit with a stranger like myself.