It would seem a 39-year-old man playing at Legoland would stand out. But it’s obvious that Carl belongs; no one gives him a second glance. He’s absorbed in his task, concentrating on building the perfect Lego locomotive. It takes some time, but the finished train engine is a piece of work, heavily reinforced to withstand any obstacle it may encounter. Carl sends the locomotive careening down the Legoland race ramp alongside all the kids’ cars and trucks, and it comes to an abrupt stop as it hits the bumper at the bottom. Satisfied with the result, Carl walks back to his bike parked outside. For the ride home in the growing dark he turns on his lights, all 20 of them. With each light powered by two to four batteries, it takes large quantities of Ds and AAAs to keep the lights going. Carl keeps a few boxes of them on hand.
It’s Saturday afternoon and Carl Bentson has pedaled his bike to the Mall of America. The ride from his St. Paul home isn’t too long, a little more than an hour each way. Starting from his place near West Seventh, Carl pedaled up the big hill at 35E and St. Clair Avenue and then west across town to the river, then south to the Ford Bridge and across to Minneapolis, around Fort Snelling and the airport to the Mall.
Although Carl enjoys the ride, he does it mostly out of necessity. As a person with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome and its associated retardation, Carl doesn’t drive motor vehicles. His bike is his means of transportation. Every time he goes to his job, runs an errand, shops, or heads out to enjoy one of his many interests, he’ll be riding his bike.
Cornelia de Lange Syndrome is congenital. Speech and communication are affected and there is usually some degree of retardation. Carl doesn’t let it slow him down. He has a seemingly endless supply of energy and enthusiasm. A powerfully built man, short and stocky with fireplug legs, he usually wears suspenders.
Carl is special in another way, a way that continues to astonish anyone who knows him. Carl lives with Savant Syndrome, a rare and spectacular condition in which a person has developmental disorders but astonishing brilliance in one particular area. In Carl’s case, the disorder manifests itself in a nearly photographic memory for information and minutiae related to automobiles.
If you want to know the original list price of an automobile, its standard and optional features, or just about any detail concerning cars—any make or model—ask Carl. Once, while driving with Carl in my van, I mentioned that I’d looked at another model that was slightly longer. Without hesitation, Carl recited the length in inches of the wheelbase of both my vehicle and the other model. I checked later, and found that he had remembered the specs correctly.
Carl also recalls volumes of information on two other areas of interest to him: aircraft and weather data. Want to know how much snow fell during the Halloween Blizzard of 1991, what time it started, or what the temperature was? Ask Carl.
The idea that some savant capabilities might reside in each of us—that there is a little hibernating Rain Man inside—is an intriguing one. Dr. Darold Treffert says there have been instances of “normal” persons in whom savant skills emerged following a head injury, a phenomenon called Acquired Savant Syndrome. Treffert, a psychiatry professor at Madison, says there are documented cases of elderly patients whose savant abilities emerged, sometimes at a prodigious level, after being afflicted with dementia. And some medical procedures such as hypnosis and sodium amytal treatment suggest that a huge reservoir of memories lies dormant, non-accessed, in each of us. Treffert says the often surprising images and memories that can surface during our dreams are also evidence of the huge store of buried memories that lie beyond what we can access in our everyday waking state.
In Carl’s case, a passion for cars translates into reams of information that all goes into accessible memory space. One of Carl’s earliest childhood memories is the toy steering wheel his aunt put in the passenger seat of her ’65 Ford so that he could drive the car too. His fascination with automobiles started early and never stopped. He’s literally a walking encyclopedia of automobiles. As various cars pass by, especially the classic cars of the 50s and 60s, he might say “That one originally cost $3,500,” or “How do you like that one? It has shifters on the column.” Often he’ll just say “Niiiiiiiiiiiiiice!”—his highest praise.
Where there are cars, especially vintage ones, you’ll find Carl. He’s a fixture at the classic car and hot rod get-togethers around town during the summer months. At Porky’s on University Avenue, the State Fair car shows, and the weekends in St. Paul when Kellogg Street is barricaded off. Carl’s been around cars so much that he knows about troubleshooting and repairing common automotive problems, without having actually done any of the work himself.
People all over eastern Minnesota recognize Carl, as he pedals his bike just about everywhere to the east, north, and south from the Twin Cities. He goes to Northfield for Jesse James days, Taylor’s Falls to sightsee, to Red Wing, Hastings, and out on the roads in the St. Croix Valley. He shows up with his bike at many special events. I’ve seen Carl at political rallies, street fairs, and free concerts, and on TV at the State Fair.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply