Hole

Posted on January 12, 2010 in Childhood Strange

There was this house that faced Baseline in San Bernardino. One of those white gothics whose paint faded from all the years of baking in the California sun. It had a porch and on this porch sat an old man rocking in his chair, watching the traffic go by. This old man had a face that was both doughy and skeletal as was typical of a certain phase in the gaining of decrepitude. His frame suggested that he, like many of the retired of San Bernardino in that age, had been a railroad man. Most striking about him was the hole where his nose should have been. At some time, surgeons or accident had removed his schnozz down to the bone and left an opening into the convolutions of his pink sinuses. As children passed in their parents’ cars, he would lift his right hand and point to the cavity.

“See,” my mother used to say. “That is what happens when you pick your nose.”