Harvey

Blue Rock Station,
1190 Virginia Ridge Rd.
Philo Ohio 43771 USA
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I live just outside the middle of nowhere, down a half-mile long dirt lane, surrounded by cows and live oaks. The nearest place to buy anything...and I mean anything...is the Fina Station, three miles down the road and around several corners.

The Fina is actually a combination gas station and general store. It has an old, rundown look about the place - wooden floors sanded bare by the scraping of countless shoes, old white paint chipping off in the hot Florida sun. The roof is tin, streaked with years of accumulated rust.

If you really need it, you can get it there, from chewing tobacco to work gloves, video tapes to hot coffee. They have a copy machine and sell earth worms. A sign hangs on the door that reads, "If we don't have it, just ask. We'll get it for you!" And sometimes they even will.

For as long as we've been stopping there, and for a decade before that, Harvey has been a fixture at the old general store, sitting just outside the front door, chewing tobacco and watching traffic. He was there in the morning when I stopped to get gas on my way to work. He was there in the evening, making sure the woman behind the counter was safe.

Harvey was old... must have been about eighty. He only had one eye, the result of cancer. He mostly just "never said nothin' to nobody" - at least while I was around. He just sat and spit and watched the traffic. I never paid much attention to Harvey, never even knew his last name...until he died last week.

I'd always assumed that Harvey was the father or grandfather of Ted, the fellow who owns the store. Turns out I was wrong. Harvey was just a guy who knew his place in the world...and it was on the bench just outside the front door of the Fina Station in Blanton, Florida.

I first found out Harvey Grimes had died when I saw several baskets of flowers sitting on the bench where Harvey sat and spit. Being nosey, I read one of the cards. It simply said, "In loving memory of Harvey."

For folks who regularly stopped by the store, the world had lost something important. There was a big hole in that unnoticed place that Harvey had recently filled. My wife, Annie, stopped by the funeral home to let his children know how nice a man Harvey had been to our family. She wanted to explain how he would sometimes give gum to Catlyn, our three-year-old, and smile. It turns out she wasn't alone. Dozens, maybe hundreds, stopped by to pay their respects.

The funny thing is, Harvey rarely said a word. He just sat there, watching the world... and somehow having a profound effect on a small part of it.

It seems Harvey had been in the military, a retired Captain or Major or something. At his funeral he lay decked out in his dress uniform. He seemed somehow too clean, too formal.

I couldn't help thinking about him as a young man, and wondering how he might react to the way his life unfolded. As young men do, he probably hoped to be remembered for some great deed, or some heroic effort. Yet those who came to honor him knew him only as Harvey, the quiet old man who sat by the front door of the Fina station.

We may never know what we do in our lives that will be profound, or have a real effect on others. Many of us get caught up in our careers, in the office politics, and wonder if what we do will ever matter to anyone. The day-to-day lives we lead are not generally filled with glamour or heroic moments. But it is often the ordinary, the routine, that means the most to the world around us.

Catlyn came to me the other day and said, "Harvey is dead. He is never coming back." Death is a new concept to her.

So I asked her what she would remember about Harvey.

"He only had one eye," she responded, "and he was my friend."

What a wonderful way to be remembered.

written by Jay Warmke - June, 1997

Harvey