THE DUCCO DIARIES

Paul Duchow (1897 – 1988) was a stranger “we” (1960’s  Garrett elementary schoolchildren and their parents) knew of, but never knew. A gentle, silent, stigmatized man who frightened us and our parents for no reason but that he was different. I have since identified with him in some regards for many years, because I share his odd love of aimless walking, and because I too am mildly and benignly different.

THIS IS FICTION, and not about Paul Duchow, whom I never knew. Rather, it is about small town fears, prejudice, and hidden beauty.

I got the idea after Dale Neukom bought the old Duchow farmhouse – imagined “What if Dale were to find, secreted away in the barn, diaries Duchow had kept spanning all those years, what might they reveal?”

THE BOOK IMAGINES such a revelation - positive and uplifting answers to questions no living person can ever really know…

So here's the first chapter to a book I'll never actually write.

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Ducco was always ancient - certainly to us as youngsters, and even old to our parents when they were children. Always roaming, walking, never speaking but always watching, watching especially the town's children, always strange, always ... An enigma in a small town where secrets are scarce, or so we thought. That is before ... before ..., ah, but I am getting ahead of myself. All will be known in time. Ducco had more than ninety years to know, and it will take me more than ninety words to tell.

Yes, Ducco was always a stranger in a familiar town, where everyone knew everyone - everyone's parents, everyone's children, everyone's business, and everyone's secrets, practically from birth, or so it seemed. Except for Ducco. Children feared him, protective parents suspected him, but no one knew him, or even heard him speak, ever ... just that slow, constant walk, stopping only to watch us, that thin, enigmatic smile ... what did it signify? Who could have known? Who could have guessed?

He lived alone in an aged farmhouse behind north Miller's woods, less than a mile outside town. The farm's forty-five acres were overgrown, but that sun-bleached barn still stood. We could see north and east Miller's woods from the new elementary school built in 1953, and sometimes we would play in east Miller's woods, although it was forbidden by "No Trespassing" signs and by our parents. But we never ventured into north Miller's woods.

Every day Ducco walked alongside the woods, into town, past the school, stopping only to peer inside the fenced playground where we played. Then on toward the post office, along Main Street's four blocks and three bars, on around and past the few small factories, and back down through the small neighborhoods, gazing, always ever gazing at the mostly small homes, our homes, small lawns strewn with our bicycles and toys. Day after day, every day, and finally, back toward the park across from the school, stopping only to gaze, just as we filled the see-saws and swings, school having just let out. Stopping only to peer and gaze. Our bogey man.

Ducco was our town's most familiar figure and its only stranger (we thought), though we had ninety-four years to know him. What secrets did Ducco have? In the end, or more precisely thirty-five years after the end, we came to know the truth ... about Ducco and about our town.

Yes, Ducco was our town's most familiar figure. He always looked the same, always. Ancient. Wearing the same last-century wool suits and hat, even through the stifling summers. Finally one summer day, no one saw Ducco, but no one knew that no one saw him. We don't note our routines' most familiar aspects. But when the bogey man is no more, children will notice before too long. It was my best friend twelve-year old Jeff Claxton who finally whispered it. We were watching fireflies in east Miller woods' dark, wisecracking adolescents, full of ourselves, when Jeff suddenly blanched, eyes wide. Then the whisper I still hear thirty-five years later ... "Where's Ducco been? I bet he's dead!".

A week later chief Ben Schaeffer went out alone to the farmhouse and found him "expired". There weren't any heirs, and John Haffner bought the Ducco property at a state auction. That was in 1968. He built a new split-level ranch house, but left the forty-five acres wild and that sun-bleached barn stand.

I grew up, joined the Marines, volunteered for two tours in Viet Nam, came back home to Missouri, spent three misguided, drunken years trying to find my place in the town, and finally left for college downstate. Too old to party with the 18-year old freshmen, I learned mechanical engineering and left Missouri for Detroit. By then my parents had moved to Florida, I had lost track of Jeff Claxton, and Nancy got married, so I never went back home. Until the 1991 George Bush recession laid me off. The one thing I had done was to save some money, so with no other prospects, I went back home to Garrett, Missouri.

Within a couple years things picked up, the Japanese built a factory in Garrett, I became the engineering manager, and when John Haffner retired to South Carolina in 1995, I bought Ducco's farm. Two years later I found Ducco's diaries secreted away in that ancient, ramshackle, sun-bleached barn.

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 Revelation! ... the Ducco diaries. Finally I see what he saw ... and now I know Ducco. But in the knowing, I find the 'familiar' town is strange indeed. A stranger to even itself, though not to Ducco ... Ducco, who peered and gazed upon us and into us daily, for seventy years. Ducco, the eternal stranger ... he knew us so well, and our parents, and our grandparents, and even our great-grandparents. And now I know ... And finally, the town will come to know itself.

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So what was it that Ducco knew? I had no idea when I first wrote this. But now I know, at least were I to write the book, which I won't:

Ducco's perspective and nature could pierce appearances, prejudices, social expectations & stigmas, etc., and he apprehended love and beauty in ordinary and even 'impoverished' lives and places to which the town was oblivious. Through his diaries, the town comes to realize the treasure of its ordinary lives and places.

Timeline: 
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1962 Ducco dies
1968 graduate high school, join marines
1972 discharge marines
1975 start college
1979 graduate college
12 years work in Detroit
1991 Bush recession
1995 buy Ducco farm
1997 find Ducco diaries
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