of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 17, 1953
IF THEY'D told us when we came here that we could have our pick of next-door neighbors, we couldn't have done as well by choice as we did by chance. For chance gave us Neighbor Brown, a special type of a guy.
And when a fellow like Mr. Brown goes you don't miss him in a casual way. The loss is sharp and personal because, through the years, you forge a big link of affection for such a man.
I have kidded Neighbor Brown a few times in pieces I have done, making him out as a lazy lout like me who resisted all physical labors as a matter of principle and who liked to lean on a rake while the womenfolk did the work.
He enjoyed being ribbed and I'm glad I ribbed him. It proves somehow that my esteem for him wasn't something suddenly contrived out of tragedy. You don't kid people you don't like. And although we did shoot the breeze a lot while casually tidying up our acreage, he always kept his place neat as a pin, was proud as punch of his super-duper lawnmower, his evergreens and his flowers, and was invariably one of the first in the block to clear his walks of snow.
FOR EIGHT years we had D.H. Brown for a neighbor, hardly conscious that he was around until it came time to use his ladder or rake or pruning shears. He always was the kind to mind his own business, leaving you alone until you needed him. But get sick or break a leg and you quickly knew the Browns were around.
Neighbor Brown got a kick out of the simple things. He liked having his son and daughter and their families around. He hadn't owned a car for years. "We talk about it sometimes," he'd say, "But I look at that long driveway and think about all that snow and get the idea out of my head fast." He was tickled pink over a retaining wall we finally built between our back yards, which replaced a rickety fence. A newly installed clothes pole pleased him, too. So did the peonies out by the garage, which he barely lived to see come into this June's glory.
MR. BROWN never borrowed a thing. He was afraid his request might put you out. It was part of his New England makeup, I guess. He'd spent most of his youth in Maine and so had his wife. They'd lived out on York avenue for 41 years but the stamp of Maine endured.
Most of his friends called him Dan. But to me he was Mr. Brown. It wasn't in deference to his age. He never let his 68 years cloud his enthusiasm or get in the way of whatever he wanted to do. He wasn't old. But you felt an innate dignity about him, even though he never stood on ceremony, was never stuffy or offish and was fast with a wisecrack.
He even kept his sense of humor while he lay there at the edge of Xerxes avenue with seven ribs and a collarbone broken and his left lung fatally torn after two cars collided at the Forty-sixth street intersection and careened into him. While people waited mute and tight-lipped for the ambulance, Mr. Brown had a joke when the Rev. Stanley Conover bent over him--something about everything being ready now for the last rites.
WHEN WORD came Sunday evening that he was dead we knew the neighborhood never again would be the same, never again quite so good. We wouldn't see a tall, angular man striding off to work with a cigar clamped in his teeth. We wouldn't see him shining his shoes on the back stoop or knocking the ashes out of his pipe or checking the thermometer and cracking wise about the weather.
The neighbors will go to his funeral today to say a last goodbye to a man they could always count on to give them a lift or a laugh. They won't forget him. You don't forget the likes of Neighbor Brown.
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