Old Man Carter
Robert L. Withers
4215 Ambler Drive, Kensington, Maryland. That was the house in which I spent my first years…up until the early weeks of the fifth grade. While the actual neighborhood was a few blocks long by ten or so blocks wide, my personal neighborhood was much smaller, consisting of a couple of blocks either way on Ambler Drive and, a half block the south of our street, the woods.
My autonomous life during those years was pretty much confined to that small area. I don’t count walking the six or eight blocks to school as an exercise in autonomy, that walk was mandatory. Nor do I count the many excursions shopping with my mother or the many wonderful day trips with her, for they were hardly autonomous. No, the truth is that my geographic sphere consisted of a paltry few blocks of Ambler Drive and the woods across the street.
To be sure there were times when I ventured to a classmate’s a few blocks away and there were other times when I ventured into the deep woods at the far northern extremity of the neighborhood, but those were more like space shots escaping the gravity of earth rather than my normal biosphere of existence.
My confinement to Ambler Drive is driven home by the fact the only contiguous street whose name I recall is Cedar Lane, which was the street leading to school, to the business section of Kensington and, in the other direction, towards Washington, D.C. I rest my case, Ambler Drive and the nearby woods was my sphere of geographical autonomous experience.
Behind the homes on our street were homes on another street. Those homes and the people who lived in them were strangers to me. They were on the other side of our backyard chain link fence. They were on the other side of all of the rear fences on our side of Ambler Drive.
I was told by my mother that when we first moved into our house that there were no houses yet behind us, or at least no suburban tract houses. In fact, the folks who lived behind us had cows, but I have no personal memories of cows, I only recall houses…no people…just their houses…houses outside my solar system, houses beyond Ambler Drive.
One afternoon I was playing with my friend Gloria in her backyard when the subject of Old Man Carter came up. We were playing near her back fence and were viewing the backyards of the houses behind the houses of Ambler Drive. As we looked over her fence a few backyards down the other street, I said, “Old Man Carter lives over there.”
Gloria nodded a knowing “yes.”
Old Man Carter was deemed to be a crotchety, mean, miserly old man who would do damage to little children if they were found on the environs of his property. He was farmer MacGregor stepped right out of the tale of Peter Rabbit, with knife in hand ready to chop the tails off little girls and boys and to plop them in a stew with parsnips and other horrid vegetables.
All of the kids on Ambler Drive knew about Old Man Carter, everyone of them. Donald knew, Jackie knew, Roger knew, Randy knew, and the one girl on Ambler Drive, Gloria, knew.
Old Man Carter was just as real as the bad cowboys on Roy Rogers, the Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz, or the goblin under your bed waiting to ambush you once the lights were out. Actually, Old Man Carter was more real than Black Bart, or the Witch, for Old Man Carter, that nasty, misery, mean, parsimonious old geezer, that hateful specter of a headless horseman, was right beyond our own backyards and at any time his long bony arms and hands might reach into our realm of Ambler Drive and snatch one us away never to be seen again.
Over the years since leaving Ambler Drive I have encountered a number of neighborhood kids relaying dire warnings of Old Man Carter. Old Man Carter could be someone whose political leanings are different than the neighborhood’s. He could be a neighbor whose color of skin or cultural traditions don’t mesh with Ambler Drive. She could go to a church that sprinkles while the rest of the neighbors immerse. Perhaps her regional accent stands out in a backyard barbeque. Perhaps the political bumper sticker would be better suited to another section of the nation. Maybe he prefers red sauce in a white sauce neighborhood.
I once worked with a Jewish contractor who had gone to college in a region of the country (which I’ll leave unnamed) which hadn’t had much exposure to Jews, or apparently to common sense either. My Jewish friend swore to me that some of his classmates, when finding out that he was Jewish, wanted to know if he really had a tale.
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me, I just couldn’t believe it, but I accepted his statement for he was a man of integrity.
In retrospect, why should that story have surprised me, having heard about Old Man Carter from such an early age? For you see, for all any of us kids knew there was no one by the name of Carter who lived on the street behind Ambler Drive. In fact, if asked, none of us would have been able to tell you who first started the tale of Old Man Carter. None of us had seen him, none of us had been on his street, none of us knew anything, other than behind Amber Drive was a different street with different people, none of whom we really knew, none of whom we really saw.
Christ teaches us to tread lightly on the reputations of others. He teaches us to be careful in our judgments of others, and I think He would remind us that we have no doubt all been Old Man (or Old Woman) Carter to others – (perhaps deservedly so?) – and also that we have all likely perpetuated (or passively acquiesced!) in unfortunate characterizations of others. Beauty of beauties, Christ came so that when we do encounter people marginalized by the Ambler Drive neighborhood we can cross those fences and get to know the real Mr. Carter.
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