I met him on a Sacramento city bus. I was thirteen. Often after school, I would ride the city bus into downtown to explore the boarded-up old theatres on K Street. It was on one such trip that I saw this rather dapper, yet humbly dressed old man. You could see just the slightest bit of fray in his well kept, but very old clothing. This saddened me and intrigued me at the same time. Even then, the young and often precocious me had no fear of talking to anybody about any subject. I sat next to him and struck-up a conversation about straw boater hats. I thought that he surely was alive when they were in fashion. Indeed he was.
Charles William Midgley (December 17, 1899 - April 2, 1985) fascinated me. On my frequent bus trips to downtown I would see him again and again and we became pals. He told me he had been, most recently, a volunteer swimming instructor at the Sacramento WMCA and a piano and music teacher. This eventually resulted with an invitation visit to his Land Park cottage at 777 Perkins Way. What I learned in that house has remained with me every day of my life. For the next year or so I would often visit, I even brought my parents along one time because I thought this man was so extraordinary, I thought they should meet him.
In the c
