The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1947-06-20

in a town on Long Island
Sound, we had the opportunity
of watching an old man who
lived the life of a Stone Age
savage within a half-hour's
ride of New York City. He
was a skinny old fellow about
large blotchy
seventy years of age, with large
blotehy freckles, and though his
head was bald and the fringe
around the sides was snow
white, he was called Red" by
the Inhabitants of the town.
In his younger days he had
been a red-head and the nick
name had stuck to him long af-
ter most of the people had for
gotten his real name
He lived in the abandoned
rotting hull of a small boat
which had been beached in the
marshy end of a boatyard, and
he earned perhaps three or
four dollars a week digging
CLANS in the sound. It is
hard to describe the kind of a
nest in which he lived. The
frame of the little boat had
long ago rotted away and the
planks had sagged to the
ground. 1t looked like a col
lapsed barrel after the hoops
have been hammered off. Red
had spread a layer of branches
and twigs, newspapers and old
rags, over the bottom of this
pile of scraps. Then he had driv-
en- four slaves in the ground and
stretched a weathered and torn
tarpaulin over these. The top
of the tarpaulin was not more
than four feet off the ground,
and the shelter was scarcely
long enough to let Red lie down
at full length.
We had a small sailboat in the
yard and used to see Red stir
ring about his little rat's-nest
or rowing his weathered old
skiff in the sound. Once we
walked down the plank walk
across the marshy place to his
shelter to buy some CLANS, and
thus had an opportunity to see
Red at home. II was late after
noon, and Red was lying on his
pile of rags. He had retired
for the night. There was moth
ing else for him to do. He did
not even have a lamp to read
by. Red asked what we want
ed, and then told us he would
go out digging CLAIMS the next
day and would fill the order.
When we left he dropped the
flap of his tent and lay back
once o in his gloomy lit
tie nest. As we walked away
it seemed to us that he was per-
haps the most lonely and iso-
lated human being we had ever
seen.
One of the brothers who own
ed the boatvard had known
Red as a younger man and told
us a little of his story, He said
that Red had always been a
quiet, retiring sort of fellow
and that he had been a ma
mas boy" till he was almost
middle aged. He had worked
as a clerk in the town and he
lived with his widowed moth
er, and had never married.
When the old lady died, Red
never seemed to get over the
blow. He was like a small
child who had been abandoned
in the cold, hard world. He
quit work, and when he could
not pay the rent on the little
house where he had lived so
long with his mother, he was
put out, and simply roamed the
streets of the town and slept
at night in the parks and along
the wharveS of the slip which
led into the sound.
The boatyard man said: "If
you think Red has a hard life
down there in the old boat, YOU
should have seen him about 25
years ago when he was living
in the cement culvert. That's
right, a culvert. They were
putting down eulvertS in Pei
ham Road and Red pried one
over the side of a little hill one
night and let it roll down to
the foot of the embankment in
the woods. And Red holed UP
there for ten or fifteen years
till they cleaned out the woods
for a residential development
and ran him off. He came
around the b~oatyard and did a
little work painting and scrap
ing and he would sleep at night
in the old boat down at the
marsh. That was fifteen or
twenty years ago. That hull
wasn't so bad then and Red
could have fixed it up. But he
just let it gradually fall apart"
We used to e Red pulling
his Skiff on the sound. or scrat-
ching around the sand and