The man by the side of the road

He was the man by the side of the road. He lived in a tidy brown house close by busy Route 102 in Derry, N.H., and every morning you would see him sitting on a chair in his yard, smiling and waving at every car that passed, stunning commuters so much with his foolish courage that many would wave back. I would always return the wave and beep my horn, which made him wave back all the harder. He was also a master gardener, known for the tall, exotic grasses that flanked the flower patch in his back yard and in late spring or early summer, you could count on him to put up a wooden, hand-painted sign that read “Peonia” with containers of fluffy peonies underneath it, for sale for $5. Rick often said he wanted to stop by and give him a copy of Sam Walter Foss’ poem, “The House by the Side of the Road,” because the words reminded Rick so much of him. The poem ends, “Let me live in my house by the side of the road,/ Where the race of men go by-/ They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,/ Wise, foolish – so am I./ Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat/ Or hurl the cynic’s ban?/ Let me live in my house by the side of the road/ And be a friend to man.” Now Rick will never get the chance. Robert Young died last Saturday at the age of 75, as he was walking into a convenience store in Chester, N.H., and a woman apparently confused her accelerator and brake pedal and struck him with her car. A garden of tributes quickly sprouted outside the door of his house – balloons, baskets of mums, candles, scrawled notes, ceramic angels – many of them left, I have no doubt, by people who had never actually met him. He represented something – innocence, kindness, sweetness in the face of a hostile world, perhaps – the “friend to man” of the poem. A memorial service is planned for Friday, from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Masonic Hall in Derry and I expect it will be crowded with many of his unmet friends. I was standing outside his door Tuesday morning, reading the information about the memorial service pinned to his door when something brought tears to my eyes. A woman drove by in her SUV, looked over, honked and waved. His foolish courage lives on.