Ed Herder : Shepherd of Refuse

This sketch probably looks pretty strange ... It's a sketch of a lone chimney stack, left standing after a house burned down when I was about 12 years old. I don't have a real picture, so the sketch will have to do ... Here's the rest of the story :

I grew up in the country outside of Polar, a small village in Northern Wisconsin. One of the biggest events in that community’s history happened about 1982--second only to the restaurant and bar burning down the week after they’d finished building a new volunteer fire house not 50 feet away. This event I’m talking about was another fire …

Across the road from our house lived an old hermit named Ed Herder. He was an old man who collected and saved everything other people didn’t want. Now, we’d recognize him as a hoarder. He really did keep the area free of litter. I only found out how much he’d done after he was gone.

His dark house was a ramshackle old thing, with no electricity, no plumbing. I think even the stairs leading to the second floor had probably fallen down years before. His yard was overgrown with lilacs and sumac and other brushy weeds I couldn’t identify. The wood siding had weathered to a dark gray long ago. We kids were ordered to NEVER GO EXPLORING over there. Aside from stepping on rusty nails or other hazards, he was suspected of booby-trapping some of his space. My parents just did not want us to get hurt.

Herder must have been about 70 years old, though he may have looked older than he actually was. He always wore a ratty old dark wool coat. Even in the dog-days of August, there he was at the side of the road, hitching a ride to town in this smelly old wool coat. I’ve heard that wool is warm in winter and cool in summer. Maybe this was the proof? Or maybe it was easier to hide things that he shoplifted?

He had lived through the Depression years and learned the ethic for conservation. For a while he actually owned two houses. The other was next to the saw mill right in Polar, also without modern amenities. When that house burned down, I remember people who helped him salvage his belongings, saying that they saw mayonnaise jars stuffed full of money. He didn’t trust banks at all. He’d lived through the Great Depression, remember, when people lost their life savings. At that time, Social Services set up an account and made him put his money in the Credit Union, for his own good, so that he wouldn’t be subject to burglaries.

I remember one day when I was 6 or 7, I walked out to the mailbox with my little brother and my baby sister. Herder was just returning home from a forage through the dump. It must have been a good day because he seemed really happy. He greeted us and offered a pair of old creme-colored pumps to the beautiful lady I was with. She was unimpressed. After he turned to go home, so did we and she commented that he was a “creepy old man.”

Well, after Herder's first house burned down, he lived across from us. When winter got too cold, he would ask us for candles, matches, or a loaf of bread to tide him over until he could catch a ride 10 miles to Antigo to get supplies. We also let him draw water from our outside faucet. We always knew when he was around because the pipes would shudder and ache through the house to announce his preasance. It was this sound heard 2 times daily for so long that we missed first one day, then another, and another.

On the third day, Dad really started to worry and decided to go over and check up on him. Grappa Eddie went with him.

They returned about 20 minutes later with news that the old man was dead in his chair next to his wood burning stove. Ma called the county coroner while Dad and Grappa told of all the junk and newspapers and jars he had piled up there, leaving only a rabbit trail to wheedle through the monstrous piles of stuff. He even had an old piano there with no strings in it! The man seemed to save everything! It had taken them so long to find him because Herder had boards piled up outside his house which were hidden by the quack grass. Some of them still had nails in them, so they had to be careful where they stepped. Dad seemed to be pretty affected. He said the body was already starting to fall apart with the warm August weather. Back on our porch, he could still smell Herder’s rotting body, though the rest of us smelled nothing amiss.

Not long after, the coroner arrived, asked a few questions, and trekked off across the road with a few things and a black plastic body bag. Dad led the way.

Anyway, after many weeks of legal permits and red tape, the house was officially condemned and legally set aflame. The fire trucks came in the evening with a very fine misty rain to help contain it. Twelve of us, family, friends, and neighbors, sat on the porch with drinks and soda pop watching the event.

The wooden parts of the house came down first, leaving a brick chimney which stood like a tower for several more days before it finally fell. Herder had died sitting next to that chimney. Perhaps it was his spirit and energy that worked so hard to keep it standing for a few days more.

We found out that he actually did have some family. Two nephews in Milwaukee came up and parked a boat next to the rubble for a few years. They said that he’d led a hard life and had been abused by his father. They also said that he was French, after which, Dad always referred to him as Ed Hertier to make him a little more upscale than he was. The nephews posted a sign attempting to sell the land. Seven years later, they were still trying to sell it. Mr. Herder had collected everything nobody wanted, and now nobody even wanted his land.

I should say that Mr. Herder, Shepherd of Refuse, lived as he did because he wanted to. He had plenty of money, and no debts. He lived alone, though he could be around people when he desired. That’s real freedom--to live the way you want, even if it’s outside the norm.

After her died, I noticed a lot more garbage at the sides of the road. No one bothered to stop and pick up the aluminum cans any more. They were only worth something to an old hermit.

Note : This story was originally worked up for Anne Lundin's Storytelling Class in 1997 when I was still in Library School.