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Updated: May 29, 2025
Except for his meals, and a brief hour for his after-luncheon nap, he spent all his time there. For in the park old man Minick and all the old men gathered there found a Forum a safety valve a means of expression. It did not take him long to discover that the Park was divided into two distinct sets of old men.
George and Nettie, relieved, thought he ambled to the Park and spent senile hours with his drooling old friends discussing nothing amiably and witlessly. This while he was eating strong meat, drinking strong drink. Summer sped. Was past. Autumn held a new dread for old man Minick. When winter came where should he go? Where should he go?
It was Canary's day downstairs, he remembered. He took off his rubbers in the kitchen and passed into the dining room. Voices. Nettie had company. Some friends, probably, for tea. He turned to go to his room, but stopped at hearing his own name. Father Minick. Father Minick. Nettie's voice. "Of course, if it weren't for Father Minick I would have. But how can we as long as he lives with us?
And the year that followed never was quite clear in old man Minick's dazed mind. In the first place, it was the year in which stocks tumbled and broke their backs. Gilt-edged securities showed themselves to be tinsel. Old man Minick had retired from active business just one year before, meaning to live comfortably on the fruit of a half-century's toil. He now saw that fruit rotting all about him.
In my day when you got married you had babies." George and Nettie had had no babies. At first Nettie had said, "I'm so happy. I just want a chance to rest. I've been working since I was seventeen. I just want to rest, first." One year. Two years. Three. And now Pa Minick. Ma Minick, in the old house on Ellis Avenue, had kept a loose sort of larder; not lavish, but plentiful.
Old man Minick said George was right. He said everybody was right. You would hardly have recognized in this shrunken figure and wattled face the spruce and dressy old man whom Ma Minick used to spoil so delightfully. "You know best, George. You know best." He who used to stand up to George until Ma Minick was moved to say, "Now, Pa, you don't know everything."
No. Not a thing. Just dropped in to see my son a minute." "I see." Not unkindly. Then, as old man Minick still stood there, balancing, Mr. Satterlee would glance up again, frowning a little. "Your son's desk is over there, I believe. Yes."
A man was fishing near by. "Good weather for fishing." "Yes." "Wonder what time it is, anyway." From a pocket, deep-buried, came forth a great gold blob of a watch. "I've got one minute to eleven." Old man Minick dragged forth a heavy globe. "Mm. I've got eleven." "Little fast, I guess." Old man Minick shook off this conversation impatiently. This wasn't conversation.
A hawk-faced woman of about forty-nine, with a blue-bottle figure and a rapacious eye. She sewed in the dining room and there was a pleasant hum of machine and snip of scissors and murmur of conversation and rustle of silky stuff; and hot savoury dishes for lunch. She and old man Minick became great friends. She even let him take out bastings.
Stocks were lower than ever and still going down. His five hundred a year was safe, but the rest seemed doomed for his lifetime, at least. He would drop in at George's office. At one corner of each desk stood a polished metal placard on a little standard, and bearing the name of the desk's occupant. Mr. Owens. Mr. Satterlee. Mr. James. Miss Rauch. Mr. Minick. "Hello, Father," Mr.
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