The Man Who Knew No Noun

Abe Springer was an example of the perfect old man that mothers could trust around their children. He was supremely simple, utterly harmless, and innately the happiest of fellows.

Abe was one of the mainstays at Sugar Loaf. And the hardest worker. In the old days, when we were known as the County Home, he literally worked from dawn to dusk weeding the five-acre truck farm, piling the garden refuse in compost bins, watering, fertilizing, picking, and hauling. Not capable of sorting or discriminating between edible and inedible fruit and veggies, he could haul the produce anywhere with his sinewy, farmer's frame. Ole Abe could endure all elements, including ninety-five degrees and minus twenty. He was a perfect worker as long as you stood at his side and guided him.

When he wasn't working, he could sit endless hours doing nothing. It was as if he'd had a lobotomy at age two; he had no self-motivating ambition whatever. He closely resembled a machine; flick on his switch and he would work until a foreman turned off his motor. Abe also knew no wrong nor right. He simply functioned with what was in front of him. And because of all-the-above, I never saw a happier man. Imagine a person unable to be distracted and possessing no fear whatever.

After TV was invented, Abe ignored it; he NEVER watched. Ask him why and he couldn't answer you. The truth is, there wasn't a thing he did knowing why. He simply did them because they were in front of him and

needed doing. It's not surprising that most of his answers were mere shrugs.

As we've seen, this was the exact opposite of T. Talbot whose nervous energy required her constantly to be busy busy busy. If not with arts and crafts, with her repetitive mouth. But Abe Springer was animated only when he was doing something, and he only did things that produced a concrete product. As I read between the lines of my Journal, I suspect this was the basic reason T.T. disliked the old man so. Nay, was utterly repelled by him. She needed things to react to while he never reacted to anything. And when he didn't react to her, it bothered the old girl's ego deeply.

There was a time that, as a Program Manager, I helped the Residents cook meals. I divided them into groups of six: two cooked, another pair cleaned up, while two did the dishes. My notes say that Abe loved fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, chocolate milk, and any flavor of pudding. He could handle placing drumsticks on a pan and putting it into the oven to braise, but gravy was too complicated so was completely beyond him. Also, gravy was too arbitrary, too abstract, too creative. He could deal with the concrete well, but having to be inventive was foreign to his nature.

I don't need my notes to remember how Abe acted during meals. He sat silently and never said a word. Eating was why he was there so nothing else existed including speech. He only did the job in front of him and nothing else. He possessed the ultimate, one-tracked mind. Not only could Mr. Springer not chew gum and walk simultaneously, he was unable to walk and talk at the same time.

Since my retirement, I've mused about the many Residents I've seen through the decades. Every time I think of Abe I laugh at the contrast his

style makes next to the modern man, those who talk on a cell phone while getting dressed, groom themselves, look out the window for whatever, glance at his Day Timer, and nibble breakfast, all at the same time. To them, Abe would undoubtedly be the walking dead. To him, today's man was a freak worthy of watching less than TV.

You might think that from all-the-above, Abe Stringer was a zombie, incapable of conversing with anyone. Quite the opposite: he was an avid conversationalist. That is, if that was the only thing he'd set his mind to doing. And if you could adjust yourself to a non-stop monologue in which he never used a noun you could even understand him. You must try speaking a normal sentence and see if you can do what this aged Resident did spontaneously all his life. It's next to impossible when you don't think about it.

How could one speak using no nouns? Because, like T.T., he had no memory, and I found that nouns require memory. Nouns require focusing on people, places, and things, not on action that requires no thought. I had to work to find nouns anywhere in his speech.

To prove my point, I went to the effort of recording a Springer-conversation and had a secretary transcribe it. Upon careful examination, in an eight-minute, four-page monologue, ole Abe used only three nouns. Remarkable! The conversation was amply sprinkled with pronouns and verbs, even some colorful adjectives, but nearly void of nouns. Here's part of the transcription.

"You know, the other ... ah, ah ... I went down to the ... you know where, just the other side of that big ... ah, ah ... and I asked ... you know, that feller who dug those thingies with that big ... ah, ah ... the one with the dusty, round ... ah, ah ... and then you know what? Out of the clear, blue ... this black and white ... well, it darted straight down like it was hell-

bent for ... you know ... and it ..."

Naturally, when I first encountered a Springer-conversation I was baffled. It took me six months to realize that the old gentleman was speaking complete sense. To put his speech in perspective, it was like reading the Hebrew Torah that contains no vowels; the reader must provide them. So, too, listening to Abe Springer. The listener simply had to know what the ole boy was talking about, possess an active imagination that allowed him to visualize the speaker's nounless descriptions, and be attentive to every nuance. THEN one could follow the conversation easily. But to one just introduced to his style, the blabber meant next to nothing.

I always enjoyed Abe's presence. When he worked, he ONLY worked, so he produced a great deal. He was never distracted. And when he ate, he ONLY ate, so he bothered no one. When he played cards, he ONLY played, so you knew he would make no frivolous mistake. And when he spoke, he spoke ONLY, never adding ego or any attempt to influence you. Because of that, he was most entertaining, as long as you took the effort to follow his non-noun logic.

I must add a note of the post-Abe days. After he had passed and I was leafing through my Journal, the ole boy's speech pattern so caught me that I used it when teaching a Sunday school class. I challenged the students to write a page describing something without using a single noun. I had them read the pieces aloud, encouraging the others to figure or guess what was being described. No one came close to Abe Springer, and it didn't surprise me one bit. The Octogenarian was a master of non-noun-ness for he'd been using the system his entire life. I found in all my years at Sugar Loaf few things that amazed me as much as this simple man's ability to live with a blank mind yet work so hard, all the time without the burden of all those

persons, places, and things.