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The following story was commissioned to honor Rav Skoglund. My interview with Rav Skoglund was very wide-ranging, but a few themes were echoed throughout.

First, he has a strong belief that there is great value in Jewish distinction. However, while we must be distinct, our highest purpose is only realized when we are woven into the fabric of the rest of humanity; when our distinction strengthens the vast web of human unity.

How do we strengthen that web? By creating a civilization through which people can be seen and embraced in all their complexity – and through which they can realize their potential.

The following story is inspired by these thoughts.

Blueberry

Pickett’s Lane would once have been entirely mundane. The street itself is made up of old stones – the last echo of the days before concrete and asphalt. On either side of the street, there are wrought-iron streetlights with little glass lanterns. Once upon a time, they were even gas-fired. Of all the streetlamps on the lane, only one of them actually works. Beyond the streetlamps there are narrow sidewalks. Beyond them, brick buildings line either side of the lane. The smell of the old bricks fills the air – musty and earthy with a metallic tang – one slowly leaching from the genuine, 100% real, mortar. While the buildings are old and worn, it is clear that whoever owns them cares enough about them to keep them clean and well-maintained.

Modern buildings sometimes try to imitate places like Picket’s Lane. But instead of worn and imperfect brickwork, they have thin curtain walls hung on steel frames. The walls themselves are marketed with catchy names like Heritage Brick^tm or “Classic Masonry^tm. While the walls harken back to another reality – the resemblance to Pickett’s Lane is only skin deep.

The fact is that Picket’s Lane no longer really fits in this world.

Neither do the people who call it home.

That one working streetlight shines down on two little shops. On the right side of the street is “Doodads and More” and on the left is “Lucy’s Flowers.” The two shops have been located across from each other for 50 years. Despite that, the two proprietors have never so much as said ‘Hello.’

A quick visit to each of the stores will reveal the reasons why.

“Doodads and More” has a rather complex bell that tinkles with a broad array of notes as you push open the old-fashioned glass door at the front of the store. The place itself is an insane riot of, well, doodads. They line the walls, hang from the ceiling, and are stuffed onto shelves. There is no apparent means of organization. To shop here, you will need help. To get it you have to maneuver down overly narrow and excessively high aisles, with doodads (and more) threatening to bury you forever. But there is a desk, at the very back of the room. And standing behind that desk will be a man. Not just any man, a man with the unfortunate name of Blueberry. The origin of this name is simple enough. Blueberry’s parents, Ethel and Frank Hill, fell in love with Fats Domino’s classic 1956 take on the song Blueberry Hill. They didn’t only fall in love with the song, though. Instead, with the song, they fell in love with one another. It was only natural that they wanted to name their eldest (and, it turns out, only) child after that tune. And so, Blueberry – Blueberry Hill – it was.

Blueberry didn’t grow up as the most popular of children. The other boys would pick on him incessantly. Like nerds of every age, he dreamed of his retaliation. But Blueberry grew up in an earlier time. Rather than embracing the computer age, the focus of his nerdom was far more mechanical in nature. Blueberry dreamed of making machines that would put all of his schoolyard tormentors in their place. But when it came to it, despite substantial mechanical talent, Blueberry just couldn’t imagine hurting anybody else. He wasn’t angry enough to even think all the way through his plans for retaliation.

Ethel and Frank hadn’t raised that sort of boy.

So instead of fighting, Blueberry found himself surrendering. He spent longer and longer days in his room. Fiddling, fidgeting and building. He’d take apart old machines – often older than he was. He’d scavenge their parts, and he’d reimagine their applications. In his own way, he’d build a better reality.

When Blueberry’s parents were hit by a car in 1973, he found himself with a small inheritance. He tried applying for jobs at the motor car companies, but like most 16-year-olds he had no formal education. Unlike most 16-year-olds he also found he had a visceral dislike of motor vehicles. One of their kind had, after all, killed his parents. So, Blueberry spent what he had on a small piece of real estate in the only neighborhood where he could buy anything of any substance.

He bought a small store – with an apartment upstairs – on Pickett’s Lane.

Despite the very oddity of what he sells, Blueberry does make a living. All around the world, people have a hard time finding old parts. There are so many things that are no longer made. Blueberry collects and disassembles parts. He resells that which may still have a use – somewhere. Unlike most small businesses, his store is not online. If you want something, you have to call, or show up, and ask for it. Describe it to him, no matter how hard it might be to actually describe a particular doodad, and he’ll walk down one particular aisle to one particular spot and find exactly what you need.

Blueberry isn’t an idiot. When people come to him, they are in grave need. Often, they are accomplished engineers, or the occasional car jock who can’t find an actuator for a 1952 Crosley Hotshot. One time he even supplied a part for Hoover Dam. As Blueberry sees it, his customers are those blessed with success he never had. While he certainly doesn’t want to hurt them – in fact he wants to help – he also doesn’t mind taking their money.

Economically speaking, Blueberry has found a place. But in every other way he is as alone as he’s ever been.

Perhaps that’s why his collection and deep knowledge of Doodads (and more) extends far beyond what any of his customers might imagine. If they were to venture up the old and rickety stairs that lead to his small apartment above the store, they’d start to notice things that are a bit unusual. The first thing that will hit them is the smell. It is the smell of steel, WD-40 and silicone lubricant that seems to hover in the space above the shop. Moments after the scent of the place comes to them, they will discover the product of a lifetime of tinkering and mechanical genius. They will see a small kitchenette like no other. At the press of one of a dozen buttons, a series of mechanical gears and cranks will yield a plate, open the fridge, pour of a cup of milk, start a coffee or even wash the dishes. The machines that do this are anchored on almost every countertop, drawer and door. A cutting board is suspended in the air; a knife waits nearby ready to chop whatever it is assigned. But as strange as this all is, the apartment becomes truly unusual when you venture past the kitchen.

You see, Blueberry believes everything should have a place. That is perhaps his greatest and strongest belief. He holds it close to his heart, like an article of faith that challenges everything he has known. Within him is a gap so large he cannot imagine finding the part that will fill it.

But he can find a place for anything but himself. That is why, when a part is old enough that he’s sure nobody will want it anymore (perhaps the machine it once belonged to cannot possibly be in service), Blueberry carries it lovingly up the stairs. Unlike the store, his apartment is not chaotic. It is not stacked from floor to ceiling with parts. No, his apartment represents an entirely different reality.

There is a city there.

There are tiny mechanical people, constructed of unusual springs, or strangely notched cylinders or gears and clips. There are animals, there are buildings. There are streets. There are even a few cars – although he gives them a bit of a dirty stare every time he lays eyes on them. None of it looks quite like you’d imagine it would. There are no paper mâché structures with smooth surfaces like you’d see at a model train yard. No, almost everything is metal – although a few newer plastic parts have ascended to what must be their version of Heaven. The figures those parts form suggest what they represent more than they represent what they suggest. Despite this, nobody could fail to understand what they are seeing. With one particular type of exception: scattered here and there are contraptions almost like living beings. They resemble nothing other than assortments of doodads (and more). They wouldn’t make any sense in any normal city. But here, they do. They fit in beautifully, although you and I could never say what they were supposed to be. If you were to ask Blueberry what they are all about (although nobody ever has), his answer would be simple: every part must have a place. Where there is no place for a part, he will create one.

Rather than building his city to a plan, the world he has created invariably bends so that some doodad from a 1905 Burkholder Adding Machine (a rotary calculator if you must know) can find a home – other than being part of some unloved museum exhibit.

Blueberry’s own bed, a mattress just barely raised off the floor of his room, sits in the corner below the window. It is a simple afterthought – as if sleep is hardly to be desired when surrounded by project as important as his life’s work.

Unbeknownst to Blueberry, one other person has seen his apartment.

That one person would be, of course, Lucy.

You see, Lucy lives across the Lane. She lives upstairs from her flourishing flower shop. Where one might describe Blueberry as reclusive, Lucy is anything but. All day, and indeed every day but the Holy Sabbath, Lucy’s shop is filled with a steady stream of customers. The reputation of Lucy’s Flower Shop is so widely known that people have been known to have flown halfway around the world just to ask her for a recommendation.

Lucy, it must be said, is a bit of a floral genius.

Of course, like anyone who has found their true calling, Lucy didn’t start off knowing what it was. Indeed, she didn’t even start off with the name Lucy. Lucy was born sometime in late 1955 or early 1956. She isn’t exactly sure when. She was deposited on the steps of a hospital with no papers to go on and no indication of who she was or exactly how old she happened to be.

To be fair, that might be an overstatement. Not the age thing, the steps thing. Whoever her parents were, they didn’t abandon her on the front steps of the hospital – the part of the building that faced the old Main Street and which saw a fair number of abandoned babies in the late 1950s. No, she was abandoned on the top of the single step that led to a maintenance door that, in turn, led to a barely used corridor that just barely touched a small lane that seemed to have already been forgotten by time. Yes, Lucy was left in front of a barely used hospital door on Pickett’s Lane. The hospital staff discovered her quite by accident. A motor car, the same motor car that would later run over poor Blueberry’s parents, had run into the streetlight in front of what was then Domino’s Emporium. The only important impact from this impact was that the streetlamp was repaired – becoming the only one that worked on Pickett’s Lane. Oh, and Lucy was discovered by the paramedics who had rushed to the scene.

The nurses at the hospital were so surprised to find a baby at this unusual location that they immediately named the child Pick – after Pickett’s Lane. Unlike Blueberry, most everybody who met Pick could agree that she had a wonderful name. Sadly, their interest in her rarely exceeded that brief twist of the unexpected. Before long, the hospital gave her up to an orphanage. Somehow, the orphanage gave her up to another orphanage. They didn’t do this because she was a bad child – in fact, she wasn’t outstanding in any way. She had just fallen victim to a clerical error, and nobody noticed when Pick disappeared.

The reality was, nobody really wanted poor little Pick or even noticed when she was gone.

Perhaps her parents left her on that largely abandoned hospital stoop entirely by accident.

It was in her 5th orphanage – the clerical errors really seemed to stack up – that Pick discovered her gift. This orphanage wasn’t in the city. It was out in the countryside, and it happened to have a flower garden. Pick wandered into it one day. She loved the flowers, of course. She was about to pick one when a Sister (did I mention it was a Catholic orphanage) saw her. The woman was about to chide her; to tell her not to pick the flowers. And in that instant, Pick just sort of knew what kind of flower the woman needed. She knew what the woman was missing in her life. It wasn’t a boyfriend, although that could be expected of a Nun. It was the cup of hot chamomile tea she’d so often shared with her mother before the older woman had passed.

In a moment, Pick had assembled a bouquet of daisy-like chamomile flowers, an apple leaf and an Ardwick cinnamon geranium. Together, the flowers smelled like a warm cup of tea on an autumn day. The Sister was so taken by the bouquet that she forgot to chide the child. She just smiled – in a way she hadn’t in years – breathed in the scent and found herself floating in a time long since passed and yet never forgotten.

Pick’s reputation – or, rather, the reputation of her gift – spread quickly. Soon she was assembling bouquets for everyone around her. They loved her flowers. They loved what those flowers did for them. But they hardly noticed Pick herself.

Like many young people of that age, Pick ran from the orphanage when she was only 14 (or so) years old. Just in time for 1969. She knew she could take care of herself; when it came to flower power, she was in a league of her own. Only four years later, in 1973, she bought her shop on Pickett’s Lane. In a way, she returned home. Perhaps she’d hoped her parents had been robbed – or something equally tragic – and would somehow be there 20 (or so) years later, actually wanting the daughter nobody seemed to care for.

That was when Pick changed her name. She didn’t want to be known for picking flowers – she wanted to be known as a person… who happened to pick flowers.

She didn’t pick Lucy because ‘Everybody Loves Lucy.’ No… just before she put up her sign (in November 1974), paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and his team discovered a 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus skeleton in Ethiopia. They named the skeleton Lucy.

As Pick saw it, after 3.2 million years Lucy had finally found a world that truly wanted her. Did I fail to mention that Lucy did a little too much LSD in her middle teen years? Trust me, a cosmic connection to ‘skeleton’ Lucy was hardly the most trippy of her illusions.

The first time Lucy saw Blueberry – standing behind his desk – she saw something that she had never seen before. Something that frightened her. The hole in Blueberry’s life was unlike any she’d encountered before. She knew it couldn’t be filled with Azaleas or Carnations or Roses. Even an Orchid would serve no function. No Lucy realized, with every fiber of her being, that she was the flower that Blueberry needed.

Starting that very first night, Lucy climbed the stairs to her own apartment and then looked across the street and wondered at the man who lived there and the little world he was building.

She’s done the same every night – rain or shine, snow or sleet – for the past 50 years. And not once – not once – has Blueberry looked up and seen what he’s been missing.

Lucy’s never has a hard time talking to people. Perhaps it is because she knows they’ll forget her as soon as the conversation is over. There is nothing important in the words that will be exchanged. But with Blueberry, it will all be different. She hopes it will all be different. The fear that it won’t is the reason that she can’t bear to cross the street, to introduce herself, and to change both of their worlds forever.

They were teenagers in 1974. But now, 50 years have passed.

Then a man walks into her shop. He’s tall and strong. He’s clearly wealthy and in command. He introduces himself as the CEO of a software company. Lucy knows immediately that despite all of his success; he is adrift in his life. He is lost and he is desperate, and he needs Lucy’s flowers to rescue him. She knows that his soul harkens back to his family farm. But not the wheat, or the hay, or the corn. No, it harkens back to the old copper weathervane that rested on the roof of his parent’s barn. He remembers sitting there and watching it as it told of an ever-changing world that could not be seen.

Lucy knows the bouquet that he needs. A mechanical bouquet, made of springs and gears and old pieces of copper plate. She tells the man to come back the next day and she’ll have – special order – exactly what he needs.

All that day, and into the night, she agonizes over what she must do. She needs Doodads (and more!). She needs to touch them and feel them and know how they’ll fit together. She knows how important they are; how important fixing the man who came into her shop is.

It is 2AM when she finally rustles up the courage to cross the little lane. She looks out her window and sees that Blueberry is still hard at work in his city. She opens her own door and crosses the silent road. As she pushes his door open (a little surprised to see it is unlocked), the rather complex bell tinkles with a broad array of notes.

She walks to the desk at the back of the shop. And then she stands, waiting to place her order. Blueberry comes down the stairs. He doesn’t look up. He avoids eye contact, like he always has. Nonetheless, the appearance of a midnight customer doesn’t seem to have flustered him in the least.

As she watches him maneuver his way towards the desk, she looks at him and she sees what she always sees – a man with a gap as large as any she’s ever encountered. A man with a gap that only she can fill. And a man she hopes will want her for herself.

He reaches his desk.

He lifts his eyes.

And two worlds are completed.