Greetings and Salutations

I had a meeting at UCSF last night. It’s only about ½ mile from here as the crow flies. It is three times longer than that to drive because you have to get across Golden Gate Park and the route is circuitous. Despite that I drove. The meeting does not get out until after dark, and it is not a walk you take at night. The park has some strange characters. The vast majority of these characters are harmless, but it only takes one.

As I drove home, I was thinking about one of the park characters from the past. We called him the Waving Guy. Every day for well over a year this guy stood at a little cut out above the Arguello Gate in the park and waved. He waved at every car, truck, stroller or wheelchair that went by. There is not a lot of traffic but there is a steady stream of vehicles as that is one of the few automobile access points across the park. He stood up and just waved all day every day. Until he disappeared, he was there every daylight hour. If it was raining, he wore a bright yellow slicker with the matching hat and boots and stood under a colorful umbrella. One hand was always free to wave.

He did not start waving as vehicles or people approached. He never stopped. At least that’s what it seemed, we were never sure. The waving was always in motion and the tempo was always the same. He would sometimes smile when people waved back, but not always, and he never disrupted his motions. I presumed it was some sort of performance art. If not, there was some serious mental illness going on. Whatever his purpose or motivation, he entertained us for months.

The year or so that the waving guy was at his post was a bad health year for Maggie. She was in and out of the hospital. The hospital is an enormous structure at the top of the hill just south of the park. My house is in the flats just north of the park. Maggie was in intensive are on the 6th floor and I was staring out the window trying to figure out if I could see my house. It’s not possible because my house is on the first block after the park. Both the hills and the trees from the park block the view of my street. I was trying to figure out how close I could see using landmarks to mark corners etc. (You find ways to entertain yourself during long stays in the hospital)

As I stared, I could see rhythmic movement in the trees and could not figure out exactly where or what it was. It took me quite a while to figure out. Eventually a smile crossed my face as I realized it was the Waving Guy. When the boys and Steve come up later in the day to visit Maggie and me I had each of them look and try to figure out what the motion was. (One of them got it right away.) All of us were hugely entertained by that. In addition, we figured out that he really never did stop waving.

One day he was gone and we haven't seen him since. I still think of him almost every time I pass that spot, and that's almost every day. As I passed his old post last night, I wondered what happened to him. He was probably in his 30s then and looked in reasonable health. I hope he is waving at some other spot now and continuing to delight people as much as he delighted us.

Funny how people touch our lives without ever knowing it.