---Michael Acklin   
A Fisheye on The Possum
    It's a temptation, interviewing archetypal humans, to shoot them through an imaginary gauze, blurring the jagged ridges as if we could get to the treasure without crossing the mountains. Getting to the treasure with Bruce Walker is a mosey of years,  which accounts for the Yo Yo Ma Solo Cello on the old German turntable, puffing earnestly as an old grey seal on a sunny arctic flo. 
'Druther not get distracted.
    Between you (or me) and the old possum lies a maze of newspaper cutouts, scraps of leather, Ozark Flyswatters on his countertop, tools nobody can recognize, speakers, guitars, ancient cardboard boxes, purses hanging from
the dark wood rafters, leather stains and cleaners,  girls'  custom leather vests, a covey of  patented guitar straps used by the likes of Neal Young, Willy Nelson, and I don't know who all famous, along with meself and  my good guitar pal Rick Haley. Most of all, you'll have to dive into the custom sandals to approach Possum Lode.
    I've been favored by God to have a back that zigs when it ought to zag, and pulls a bit to port in the settling of years. My parents got hooked into some sort of postwar bone-growth cult and decided little Mikie's problem was his feet.
Little Mikie could care less about going to Katz Corrective Shoes, but Mr. Katz had one of those flouroscopes you put your feet in to see just exactly why they hurt so bad in them cast-iron clod-pounders. There was something about
discipline for the joints and an admonishment to the parents that "the pain is just a sign of growth patterns having their way within scientific constraints. They'll get used to it by and by and the pain will disappear as they find new happiness in their bullet proof toe-jail.
    It was obvious to Little Mikie as it probably is to you, and certainly is to Bruce: This Hoodwink had never had a pair of them on his own feet. Here we are 51 years later and I've been knowing Bruce Walker for some 30 of that or so. I met him before he'd fallen into the Dream of the Possum.  In  those days he'd not even guessed that  he was drifting, Flying-Possumlike, looking for just the right place to land. By the time he sat down on Dickson Street, across from George's, it was too late for him.
    Nothing resembling an average human span was going to be his. An urban hermit had created himself.    It was, however, just dandy for the rest of us. Sometime back in the 80s I had gotten a life-saver of a job working at George's, and wandered in to his place before work.  Bruce had already noticed my leftward list and directed me around behind his counter/worktable. Grabbing a piece of newspaper with one hand and my left ankle with the other he had me remove my shoes and grabbed my ankle again.

Step on the paper and look straight ahead.
Don't ask no questions now, mind what I said!
It's obvious you never thought twice about feet,
Just hang while he traces them, simple and neat,
Dammit don't look down or back to the street!

    Then came the most succinct tutorial in feet and health I've heard before or since. It's refined itself over the years, but the message is always the same. I will not attempt to cite or paraphrase any more than I would speak for Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry or, for that matter, Little Richard. Go hear it for yourself. My feet were soon as happy as Snoopy's.   
    Jump forward again to a couple of years ago. I was visiting up from the Muddy Bayou Summer Palace and dropped in. Bruce was sitting behind the counter on that steel-and-lidocaine stool, drawing on a clipboard. He'd discovered, purely from thought, or whatever passes for it in a Flying Possum, sacred geometry. Take a square, portion it off just so...you see? Now you lay the triangle across your hand and...
    I gave him my book on sacred geometries out of pure marvel for his discovery. It was a discovery, even though he wasn't the first to discover it. He made it out of the whole cloth of his day's work. Once again, I won't tell you how it goes, finally because I couldn't possibly remember it all. Go down there on Dickson and get an education in health, posture, and most of all FEET! I know, I know...it's the leather. That's what's paid the way all these years. Give one fellow a strip of leather and he'll take to chewing it. Give it to another and he'll make a pair of personally-sized and fitted toe-castles. Little Mikie's feet don't hurt any more. I've done this four times now, with one pair being given a ceremonial burial at sea somewhere between Guernsey and Omaha Beach.
    The shop is a cluster of hats on one wall, more vests and purses, pictures and posters, gentlemen's day-bags, and more posters. I'm sure there are a great many like me whose feet are smiling, whose guitar is now safer and easier on the neck, who swat flies with custom leather scraps, carry their beers in the Possum Coozy, and who have become accustomed to his art, so lucky as we are to have one ofperhaps two such shops left in the country. Next time we'll hear a bit from himself on a' that and a' that and get a bit closer to the paydirt.