two fell swoops

Andrea and I had gotten used to seeing this cute old man shuffle by our house at a snail’s pace pretty regularly. You know, one of those people who’s lived in their old house for years and has probably taken the same walk thousands of times. There’s a cute old woman down by Packard and Stadium who does the same thing, walking I think from from a house just west of the intersection to one of the gas stations. She walks so slowly that you’ll see her as you pass on some errand and then see her on your way back - walking in the same direction. You have to kind of admire people like this for still making the walk despite what age has done to their bodies.

Anyway, in this case, the man walked from a house further north on our street to the liquor store across from our house. Every time we saw him shuffle by at his snail’s pace, Andrea and I both wanted to talk to him, though Andrea was a little bit creeped out by the way he seemed sometimes to stare at our house as if scrutinizing each little change we’ve made. Then one day as I was out on the front porch, the man stopped and barked across the front yard, “Who did those windows?” (He was referring to some glass block windows we’d just had installed on a small outbuilding on our property.) I answered cordially enough, and he told me that the person who did it knew what they were doing. Before I had a chance to ask him how we knew that, he dropped the bombshell that would instantly change our relationship:

“You know, I built that building.”

Which explained the staring. The cute old man introduced himself as “Frank” and went on to explain how he knew the original owners of our 1900-built house. He lived down the street as successive generations of the family lived here, and at some point, in the 70s I think, he was asked to do the masonry work on the little outbuilding.

From that point on, every time Frank would walk by and see us outside he’d say hi. Sometimes, I confess, we’d see him coming and go out just to be able to chat. We’re new to the neighborhood, and making friends and hearing all the history from someone who’s lived here his entire life gave us a nice feeling of some kind of torch being passed or something, some kind of approval of our presence here. What further endeared us to Frank was the fact that his old house down the street is situated just like ours, in a place where developers are extremely hungry to tear down and build more yuppie condos or parking lots. (”Bulldozer bacon” was the term reportedly used by one local developer to describe the place we call home.) As we’ve been fixing up our house, we’ve been inspired by our relationship with someone who’s stubbornly stayed here and grown old before us. And one time, literally as we were fixing up our house, re-roofing the building he built, sweat and roofing tar pouring off our bodies, we were reassured by Frank’s approving smile and the words he shouted up to us, which have been with us for every project since then: “Little by little, one step at a time.”

And just the other week, we finally stopped by his house as we walked by. We were invited in and treated to an earful of stories about the neighborhood with Frank’s nephew Vince and his neighbor Kathy. Frank was ill and mostly listened from under the blanket draped across his recliner. As we left that day, we resolved to return again soon with a freshly baked pie or something.

But a few weeks later, before we had a chance to visit him again, Frank P. Felippi died. Neighbor Kathy told us that the illness he’d been suffering from led to surgery with some unforseeable complications. The Ann Arbor News obituary is here.

The service at St. Thomas this morning was nice, though I felt like everyone there was wondering who the young guy in the back getting all misty was. It’s stupid, I didn’t really know the guy, but he meant a lot. So I thought I’d write this post in memory of Frank - the cute old man who walked by our house, or stopped and said hello; the mason who built our outbuilding; a link to the past of our home and our neighborhood; and Ann Arbor’s ultimate townie, who lived here his entire life and as everything around him changed still mustered the will to take his walk to the corner store, right up until the end. Rest in peace, Frank. We’ll make our walk just the way you did, “little by little, one step at a time.”