Old Mitt

 Old Mitt wasn't like our Walking Man at all.  He mostly sat on a bench in Washington Park and watched the world go by, except when he was washing store front windows on Main Street.  I don't think he was homeless, but he looked like a bum, which is what we used to call homeless people back in those days.  From the first time I laid eyes on him, I supposed that he had an interesting story to tell about how he came to be a bum.  You know, like he used to be a successful stockbroker until he was led astray by fast living and loose women and lost his ambition, or something like that.  I did see him walking one day, and since it was raining, I offered him a ride.  He didn't have far to go, so I only got to talk with him for a few minutes.  He spoke with a child-like simplicity, which led me to believe that, if he indeed did have a story to tell, he wasn't about to tell it to me. 

Somebody told me years later that Old Mitt had money from an inheritance or something, but it was metered out to him from a trust fund that his relatives had set up for him because they didn't believe he was competent to manage his own financial affairs.  I suppose he washed store front windows on Main Street to get a little extra spending money, although it was hard to see what he had to spend it on.  I speculated that, when he died, they would find his mattress stuffed with money or something like that, but as far as I know, they never did.  Old Mitt seemed to be content with his lifestyle.  He wasn't particularly friendly, but he wasn't unfriendly either.  He minded his own business and didn't bother anybody, which is more than I can say about a lot of people I have known.