We Stole Stephen King's House

Ya - that Stephen King - the horror novelist. We didn't steal the whole house, just part of it, kinda.

I took my daughter to Salem, Massachusetts because she was into the witch trial thing. After a few days there, she wanted to see if she could find Stephen King up in Maine. She liked him a lot at the time. I told her that was just stupid - I had no idea where King lived in Maine, which is a big state. But stupid is as stupid does, so off we went to Maine. Easy peasy - it was only an 8 hour drive to Bangor, Maine! And opposite from home. She knew he lived in Bangor & had another home somewhere else in Maine. Duh.

We pulled into Bangor, which is a cute old New England town. No clues what to do or where to go. I could find my way around easier on the moon. Well, we saw a quaint, old bookstore off the main street. Bookstores attract us naturally anyway. We walked into the bookstore & looked around a bit. Figured maybe the owner could guide us toward Stephen King's place.

We saw a typical full-size wooden coffin standing on end in the store. We looked closer & it was signed by - ta da - Stephen King! We talked to the owner & he said King comes into the store at times & one time he was here he signed the coffin. Like, oh wow. We asked if he had any idea where King lives. Ready for this?

He says sure. Go up one block, take a right, then go 2 blocks - his is the big Victorian. OMG!! OMG!!! Talk about stepping into the effluvia.

Well, we left right away & found the house. It was a very large Victorian on a side street, just one house along the block of houses. It had a black iron fence running around the property. But parts of the fence had built into it bats & spider webs. It was so cool. If I find the pics I'll post them.

My daughter, of course, was excited & wondered if King was home. She walked up the driveway. I started screaming at her, "What, are you nuts? Get back here." (nuts - yeah, like who drove 8 hours to get here?) She reluctantly came back to the sidewalk. Geesh - daughters.

We saw workmen around the house, so we figured maybe King is not here anyway. But out in the street in front of the house was a large dumpster. We looked in to it & it was filled with debris, mostly lengths of old wood, split wood, chunks of wood. The workmen were apparently remodeling something in his house. Well, guess who wanted a souvenir? No, not me. Daughter. So I dutifully hung half inside the dumpster & grabbed a bunch of the wood. There were some old clothes in the dumpster & you know who wanted that too. But no, said I, those could be the work men's clothes.

We took some pictures & then headed toward home, 12 hours away now, before the cops put out an all-points bulletin for us.

And that's how we stole Stephen King's house. Kinda

Badgered Into The Prom

My parents never really put much interest into my schooling. At most it usually consisted of a command - "Get in there & do your homework now", followed an hour later by a question - "Did you finish your homework?" & a reply by me - "Um, yeah, sure Mom (& if ya believe that I have a bridge to sell ya)." But I do give my mother credit - she belonged to the Sunshine committee of the PTA - where I think her job was to make the clouds go away on rainy days. I think that's what they did on that committee.

Which is why I found it curious that finally, finally, in my Senior year of high school, she decided to get more involved. She started badgering me to go to the Prom. Why or what prompted this (get the pun?), I don't know. But I finally gave in.

Now, I had no clue what a Prom was. I thought it was where the girls are on one side & the boys are on the other side & they play music. Boorring. The other thing was that I was very shy back then, unless I got to know you for 3 or so years. How shy was I? I had problems looking into the mirror & talking to myself. Can you imagine with a girl? Although I did have girl friends, just not girlfriends

One of them was Georgette, a Junior in my sister's class. We all hung around a lot. Georgette & I even held hands a few times when we walked. Not because I wanted to, but because she had a crush on me & wanted to. I was having borderline apoplexy. Well, she had mentioned the Prom a few times & what the hell - I asked her. She accepted. Happy Mom? A few days later she came over & told me that her mother wouldn't let her go to it. Dunno why. "Gee, Georgette, that's too bad (hahahahahah), sorry you can't go (hahahehehehaha)."

It didn't get me off the hook. My mother still brought it up. I told her I didn't know anyone to ask. She mentioned Evelyn. Now Evelyn lived across the street from me when I was younger. We were in the same elementary classes. She moved a few blocks away when I was like 11. When we reached high school I had lost all track of her. We were not in any classes together, she had her own friends & I rarely saw her in the hallways. But, I bravely went where no coward has gone before & I prepared to ask her.

I prepped & rehearsed what I was going to say to her. Nervous? You bet...not that she would turn me down, but that she would accept. I don't remember what night it was, but after postponing the inevitable enough, I walked down to her house. As synchronicity would have it, I passed Evelyn on the street the day before & we both said, "Hi" as we walked by. First contact in ages.

It was about 9pm, dark, chilly with a light drizzle. Perfect weather for the doom I was feeling. Against hope, they were home. I rang the bell & waited for her mother to come out & tell me she was sorry but that Evelyn had dropped dead or was taken by aliens. Instead, you know who answered the door. Figures. Can't get a break in life - geesh.

She gave a super friendly hello to me & I began talking. Now mind you, I hadn't spoken to Evelyn since elementary school. Well, I started talking & talking & talking & talking. No clue now what I talked about. All I know is that it was about school & tv & friends & God knows what else. And she was talking back too. She was probably wondering why this strange creature who she hadn't spoken to in years is suddenly at her door in the drizzle & prattling on about inane things.

Well, an hour passed & I was still prattling. It was getting scary because I was running out of things to say & it was getting near her bedtime, I assumed. Finally it just came out spontaneously. I swear I heard my self say "please don't go to the Prom with me", but she heard it as, "Can I take you to the Prom?"

Her eyes light up in surprise & I heard her say, "Yes, I'd love to go!" But I swear she meant to say, "Hell no, sucker." Well, the cat was out of the bag, so I prattled on just a few minutes more & left after telling her I'd see her tomorrow.

She went in probably wondering what the hell that was all about, but I'm sure very happy because she had no boyfriend & I don't think she would have gone to the Prom otherwise.

I walked home in the drizzle not believing what I had just done. Oh God. But also happy that I did it. And I didn't do it for my mother anymore, I did it for me - because I was getting out of my shell & I was hopefully doing something nice for my old friend from elementary school.

We went to the Prom, which opened a whole new world for both of us. We merged our friends into one group, did a lot of things together. The group carried on well after high school. And I had found true love, really, at least for those 4 months before we broke up.

Speaking of proms, a year later I was asked to a Senior Prom by Elaine, who I hung out with but we were not boyfriend/girlfriend. So, yeah, we went. But 3 days prior to the prom I went fishing with some friends down south Jersey in the bay. The boat was a little putt-putt with no protection from the sun. Well, we had our fun & fishing of 8 or so hours. Next day I woke up & kablooey - sun-burned to hell. It so happens that I burn easy - too easy. Besides the pain of the sunburn, my lips turned into neat pockets of burnt sores. This was not going to sit well with me at the prom. So I tried all kinda ointments & prayers, but still had the sunburn & great lips of sores.

Ever try to wear a tux with neat sunburn all over ya? Not comfortable indeed. I apologized to Elaine after beating my head against the wall at home. So the prom went off super despite my pain. But when I brought her home & after careful consideration, we both decided that kissing goodnight was not such a good thing. I haven't fished since then.

Evil Mrs. Goodness

Yeah - that's her name - Mrs. Goodness. 4th grade teacher. The only teacher in elementary school I hated. I'm sure I hated her for a lot of reasons, but I can only recall 2. I remember her being short & chunky.

We had penmanship as part of our learning. Her system was that every one started out with a black pen. As their penmanship improved, the kids were bestowed a red pen - a visible reward for such skill. After that came a green pen. Then the penultimate (get the pun?) - a gold pen for perfecto penmanship!

I struggled through the year with the black pen, watching jealously as a kid would be called up to her for a different colored pen. Finally I was to receive a red pen. I finally broke ranks with the black, proletarian pen of the masses. However, she insisted that I ask for the red pen, rather than give it to me outright. I was super shy back then & just couldn't do it, especially with the condescending way she talked to me. Well, I ended the year with the black pen. Hell with her.

The 2nd instance was about our class singing. She was teaching us the Star-Spangled Banner & we were trying to sing it. Well, she was not pleased with how we sang it. Something about us singing "ban-ner" instead of "bann-er". Well she kept us after school as punishment & we had to keep singing it. Only, she didn't let the parents know we were staying after school. When my father found out what was going on, he marched to the Principal & then came into class & gave the evil Goodness a few select words. That ended the "banner" controversy. Hell with her.

But I do remember in Spring & going on a field trip. The sweet smell of Spring was in the air. We each had our little brown bags of lunch to take with us. Some class mothers were there to go also. I remember hearing, then seeing the buses pull up. The sound of the buses & smell of the exhaust was a source of excitement & mystery. It seemed so exotic to be going away. We went, I think, to see the WWll carrier, USS Enterprise. I remember being on it & boating pass the Statue Of Liberty to get there.

Mrs. Goodness never did fall into the river like I wished, but a little later on & I was outta there - promoted to 5th grade. Hell with her.

Hanging Out With The Dead

Cemeteries are not ghoulish places. They are fascinating. Believe me. Here are a few simple stories about some cemeteries I went to while doing research on the family history.

My father & I were in Evergreen Cemetery in Plainfield, NJ looking for the headstone of Randolph Marsh. We had seen the house the family lived in circa 1910 & were now eager to find some graves. Well, Evergreen Cemetery has not be tended to for 3,000 years. It was in a mostly black neighborhood. The cemetery was maybe a city block size. But it was so overgrown in tall weeds that reached my height of 5' 10". There were also shorter annoying weeds & beers can & bottles. It was very hard locating headstones. But with luck & enough traipsing around we found Randolph's headstone. We were delighted.

But there was a headstone close by that had fallen over or was pushed over, face down so we couldn't read it. We tried lifting the stone, but it was far too heavy. Using a long tree branch as leverage was no use. So a bright idea came along. I went to the car & got the car jack. We set up the jack & began slowly jacking the stone upright. Meanwhile across the street sitting on a porch looking at us were two older black women. We got the stone raised enough to read it. I can't imagine what the two women were thinking as they watched us. Before we left I decided to add a personal touch to the headstone. In chalk I wrote on it, "WE HAS RISEN!" Hope the women stopped over later.

In Columbia County, NY we stopped in at a very small cemetery. A McDonald's parking lot would be bigger. The headstones went back to the 1700's. We noticed at one grave a large hole along one side of the grave. Exactly opposite on the other side was another large hole. What we discovered was that a gopher or ground hog had burrowed down from one side of the grave to the other. What was particularly startling was that in it's burrowing, the animal went straight through the coffin. How did we know this? Well, there were small pieces of purple fabric, pieces of damp & crumbling wood, a button & more disturbing, small bones. Human bones! My father, being the fun kind of guy he is, decided to take the spoils home. And yes, the bones too!

We were in Chatham, NY one summer. Chatham is a very small, quaint little village with it's one main street & old Federal & Victorian homes. We were staying overnight so checked into the town hotel, rather than go looking for a Holiday Inn. The hotel was a large Victorian type at least one hundred years old. Inside was dark, not quite dank, plush & homey. The room we were in was at one time some ones real bedroom. An elderly couple owned the hotel. They were very pleasant & the room was $20 - cheap. At 10:00 pm we decided to go see a movie in the local movie house. In telling the owners of this, they responded that they are going to bed after locking the front door. So they gave us the key in order that they not be disturbed when we returned! We saw the movie & let ourselves in to the hotel.

The next morning we got up, got ready to check out. That is when we found a note on a table. The owners had written that they went shopping & if we leave before they return to please leave the key to the hotel on the table! We not only could have taken the key, but also their Worldly possessions. I was struck by their trust in strangers. You will not find that trust in more populated areas. It would be downright dangerous. Such is life away from the city.

We were in Evergreen Cemetery in Newark, NJ (yes- another Evergreen). This Evergreen was overgrown like the Evergreen in Plainfield, the only difference being that this Evergreen was 3-4 times as large. Evergreen in Newark is off Springfield Ave., the same Springfield Ave. that witnessed the Newark race riots in the late 1960's. The cemetery is near the heart of the black community - very poor & very crime ridden. I went to Evergreen once before by myself & wandered through the growth, encountering no problems. Looking back I don't know if that was one of my brightest ideas. Anyway, my father & I pull up the the caretakers house. No answer.

We get in the car & I'm about to drive off. Suddenly up ahead of us about 50-60 yards are six, good-sized black males walking into the cemetery & approaching us. The scene could have been taken out of "West Side Story" in the way the six walked toward us, looking everything like a gang about to strike it's prey. My father in quick words said, "Let's get out of here." I immediately reacted by hitting the gas. The tires skidded & kicked up the gravel road. I suddenly thought, no, I'm not gonna be intimidated by them. False bravado also kicked in. I let up on the gas & slowing drove directly up to these "killas". In as calm a voice as I could muster, I asked if they knew where the caretaker was. I was told by one of them that the caretaker was on lunch. As for them? They were the cemetery work crew returning from lunch! With hearts almost in throats & feeling foolish, we left. Impressions.

Another time south of Albany, NY we spotted a lone headstone out in the middle of a farmers' field. Out of curiosity we stopped & walked out into the field to look. Still curious, we spotted a house in the distance that looked like it belonged to the farm. We walked to it, knocked, & asked the women who answered about the headstone. No special story here. But what was special was that she invited us in, gave us lemonade & we all chatted away about genealogy & what-not.

It's a different world up there. Everywhere we went people were absolutely friendly & more than willing to help us. Small town mentality? Small town upbringing? Small town isolation from the more harried suburbs & cities? Dunno. But hospitality was surprising & refreshing, along with the slow pace of life up there.

We stayed in a motel one night in Valatie (pronounced Va-Lay-Sha), NY, along the Hudson River. That summer night was the first time I ever saw the Milky Way Galaxy. It was awesome. Living in the light polluted area of New York City, I was lucky if I could see 20 stars on a good night. I envy people that see this every night.

While in Valatie we went to the local cemetery. Now my grandfather, if I recall correctly, had two sisters that died in childhood, Lydie Mae & Mabel. They died in the late 1800's. I'd seen the names countless times in my research. Two names on paper. We thought that they could buried in this cemetery since the family lived in Valatie for a while. It is a fairly large cemetery, full of trees, very old headstones, well manicured & very green. We walked all over the place. Many stones had no names or were too worn to read.


The girls --->

Running out of places to look, we spotted two headstones along one edge of the cemetery. They were all by themselves on a small rise & next to a large shady tree. It was them! The stones were small & had just their full names on each stone, as I recall. It was so peaceful, so quiet. We left & returned with plastic flowers, cleaned the stones up & placed the flowers in front. I then took photos of these little graves. I left wondering when was the last time anyone ever came to them. The family moved to New Jersey about 10 years after they died. Were they last visited ninety years ago? One Hundred? Sad. But I felt good that we kinda put closure to it. The family returned to them.

Columbia County Courthouse. The town Columbia is a handful of miles south of Valatie. A much larger town with respect to Valatie, but small & rustic compared to where I live in NJ. We wanted to look for documents relating to the family. The old Federal style courthouse is something you would typically expect to see in such a setting.

We went inside to the small, antiquated lobby/office. A woman behind a railing helped us. Kind of. She was busy, so gave us a set of keys which were for their records office & vault. We unlocked the door to the records & went in. There were, among other documents, shelves of very old ledger-type books. The books were huge, like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. Inside these books were the original writings & record keeping of people who long passed back in the 1800's. Reading them & touching them was a thrill, just because of their age. When we left we dropped off the keys to the woman. Again, I could have walked out with the keys or original records because the woman was busy & didn't notice us. You would never be given keys down this neck of the woods. Incredible.

Another cemetery near Valetie proved daunting. It had maybe 15 headstones in it. A wrought iron fence surrounded it. The headstones were from the mid-to-late 1800's. Getting there was half the fun. It sat off a small road & into the woods. "Into the woods" doesn't do the phrase justice. It was literally a jungle to get there, incredibly dense. The woods were so completely overgrown with brush, bushes, vines, & strange vegetation that a machete would really be best. We pushed & pulled things out of our way, chopped down things with small branches, in lieu of machetes. It really was an ordeal getting to the cemetery. At the cemetery we had to climb the fence & then pull away the overgrowth from the headstones. A long forgotten cemetery.

One last story. My girlfriend & I went up to Massachusetts & stopped at a Bickford's Pancake House. Across the highway we noticed part of a small, old cemetery. So after eating & her getting a Bickford's balloon on a stick we drove over to it. The cemetery was about 1/2 the size of a tennis court. Very old - 1800's. Not many graves. We saw one grave for someone named Samuel Cheevers. He had a headstone & a foot stone. Foot stones were common back then. They were like miniature headstones about 1 1/2 - 2 feet tall, placed at - duh - the foot of the grave, hence the neat name "foot stone." Don't ask why they had foot stones - I don't know.

Well, my girlfriend thought it would be neat to take the foot stone home. I wasn't too wild about the idea, but what the hell. I pulled out the foot stone & she replaced it with the Bickford's balloon, sticking the stick in the ground. We then left. End of story.

Not quite. About a month or so later we went back up to Mass. Planned to stop at the yummy Bickford's Pancake house. Only when we got to Bickford's we discovered that it had burnt to the ground some time before. No mas. No more. We always wondered - was this Sammy's revenge? But hey, at least he got a balloon out of the deal.


Cemeteries have an appeal to me. They have a solitude about them that is appealing. Quietness. An escape from the real world. They are interesting. Just the architecture of the stones is interesting, from plain simple headstones to all kinds of designs & sizes. The inscriptions are interesting too. From simple sentiments to outrageous comments & poetry & facts. Some are neglected jungles, some are squeaky manicured. Most are pretty, especially the ones in the hinterland. I never really took photos of the interesting headstones. It would have been a nice hobby.

The Dogs In My Life

No, this is not about my dating. I'll save that for another post. This is about...doggies. The ones I had...all 5 of them.

Trixie was my earliest dog. I guess I was about 5 when she showed up. My father saw an article in the newspaper about a litter of dogs that were dropped off at the door of an animal shelter. A photo with the article showed a round wicker basket with the pups in it. I still have the clipping. My father went right away & took one of the pups.

Why she was named Trixie, I don't know. The only Trixie I knew was on the Jackie Gleason Show on tv. Trixie was a mutt & solid black. I don't have many memories of her. I do remember her running around the house & playing with her. She grew into a tall, slim dog with short & shiny black hair. I remember she had a litter of pups herself & I remember being amazed at that event. I remember it happening in the middle of the night & my mother telling my father that, oops, here comes another one. I can still see her in the basket with towel in it that she laid on with the pups nuzzled around her.

Trixie was pretty much allowed to run around outside. And that's when it happened. She was hit by a car. My father rushed her to the vet where she stayed for some days. When she came back home she had a metal pin in her right rear left. After she healed it was kinda funny seeing her run. Three legs worked fine, but that leg with the pin in it didn't bend. It operated like an oar when she ran. But she could still run fast.

I don't know what year it happened, maybe when I was about 8. Came back home from playing at a friends house & asked where Trixie was. My mother said that she was put to sleep. I don't know why. But I felt deeply hurt & betrayed. My folks thought it better that I didn't know what was going to happen, but they were wrong. They never gave me the chance to say goodbye to her.

Cindy came immediately after. I think she was named because of her color, the brown of her brown & white. She was a Cockier Spaniel with the typical colors of one. I don't remember much about her for some reason. I remember playing with her, being mean to her a few times & being in the car with her. Except for walks, she was a house dog. She moved with us to an apartment when I was 12. I came home from freshman or sophomore high school one day & found my mother crying. Cindy was dead on her bed. Dunno why she died Never got to say goodbye to her either.

There were no more dogs until I was 23. My girlfriend was given a dog. Supposedly it was the off-spring of the dog from a tv series back then - Longstreet, I think. It was a mixture of German Shepherd & Doberman Pincer. A formidable mix indeed. It had the slim, tall looks of a Doberman. The only German Shepherd about it was the brown/white coloring. And contrary to its parentage, it was the biggest fraidy-cat in the world. It was afraid of its own shadow.

Circe was her name. Named after the Greek Goddess who Odysseus dealt with. For some reason we started calling her Weasel & Mama Wease, mostly using Weasel.

(Mama Wease & Retard - no, not her, the cat)


She was super fast like a Doberman - I lost many races with her even with huge head-starts. She loved to play hide-n-seek - she always found me. She didn't mind us dressing her up either. I think that's where the Mama Weasel came from - she looked like a mother weasel when dressed. She loved playing in the snow & loved to catch snowballs we threw toward her. I found a small round rock & started using that. When she caught it I could her the clunk as it hit her teeth. I still cringe, but she didn't mind. One day the rock broke in half from too much use. Inside it were all kinds of fossil shells. Neat. I still have that rock.

One summer day my girlfriend & I were lying on the bed & were heard this horrible howling. Turns out that Weasel was hit by a car. We caught up with her. She had a large gash on her right rear above the hind-leg. We rushed her to the vet & she was stitched & patched up.

One time we had this large expensive pot roast for dinner. Almost. My girlfriend took it out of the oven - juicy, crispy, yummy smelling. She put it on the kitchen table while we did other prepared other things. We turned to the table...no pot roast. Hmmm. Weasel had stolen it & ran into the other room gloriously chomping on it. It was so funny that we really didn't get mad. So weasel had the whole pot roast while we had spaghetti or some such treat.

After we married (my girlfriend, not the dog, wise ass) & she became pregnant (don't even go there) Weasel started acting strange. She started snapping occasionally which was unheard of. She also began to walk in circles a lot. It reached a crisis when she went after my wife, snapping & growling. This was not good, especially since she was pregnant & especially since Weasel was a cross between a German Shepherd & a Doberman. We took Weasel to the vet. Turns out that she had epilepsy. I never knew that a dog could have that. The vet said there was only once thing to do - put her to sleep. The next day my father-in-law & I took Weasel to the vet after my wife said goodbye to her. I said my own goodbye at the vets. It didn't take long after she was led away. The vet let me see her. I cried silently. We got home & my wife & I sat on the sofa & cried. Circe, Weasel, , Mama Wease wasn't a dog - she was a soul. I still moist up when I think of her.

The Twin Terrors are next

We got our next dog because of a skunk. Yup. We were in a pet store at the mall & saw this cutest little skunk for sale - $60. Don't know why, but we bought it. Named it Pepper. When it walked across the floor it looked like a Slinky in motion. And it really, really, really loved to hide under things. But when you found it, it was so adorable. We had it about a month when the pet store called. It seems that the first case of rabies from a skunk in 40 years was reported in New Jersey. As a precaution all skunks were being recalled. Huh? Buicks get recalled & Toyotas get recalled, but a skunk? Well, we took it back & instead of getting our money back we spent 4 times that & bought a cute little Keeshound. Say what?

A Keeshound. It's a Dutch dog. They are very affectionate. They are small to medium sized dogs. Their standard color is a long-hair salt/pepper mix. The black is a bit courser than the white. The white is very soft. When the dogs shed, the white hair can be pulled out in chunks & spun on spinning wheels to make thread, which is then woven into sweaters, etc. I kid you not. I've seen it done.

We named it Kutchen - Dutch for cake, I believe. When I say they are affectionate, an older couple we knew had 2 of them. They said that the dogs were so loving that they kept licking the couple's bare legs, to the point that the couple had to use salt on their legs to keep the dogs away!

Well, Kutchen soon had a playmate - Koffee, Dutch for coffee, I believe. So now we had 2 Keeshounds. They were so cute & playful & loving - & evil.

Every time we fed the dogs it was like they hadn't eaten in 6 weeks - they were in orgasmic throes of culinary anticipation. They wouldn't stop jumping at the food as we prepared it or carried it to their assigned dining area. They would quickly dive into their food, suddenly switch places, dive in again, switch places & dive in again. They could have entered & won a hot dog eating contest easily.

We had a bird at the time, Salem, which was an appropriate name for the witch. It hated us, but loved the dogs. It would fly down onto their noses & walk around with them.

The dogs started doing bad things ( I think Salem had something to do with this, but I could never prove it). We would come home from somewhere & find sheets of wallpaper taken off the wall. Somehow they used their little teeth to get the corner of a sheet &, I guess, then walk backwards to pull the wallpaper off until it reached the top of the wall & freed itself. Really, really annoying. They also used those little teeth to get the corner of the floor tile & pull back until the tile square was pulled up & out of the floor. That was even more annoying. It was like perpetual renovation with those 2 around.



The devil incarnate - Koffee, looking for a spot to pee, no doubt.

But what was really, really, really annoying was that they could not associate pee & outside. They were constantly peeing in the house - the rugs especially. The living room rug was so urine drenched we had to throw it away.

Finally, we could take it no more. We put an add it the paper - free, cuddly dogs (hehe, wink, wink). Well, soon some Scottish guy came & happily took them away. We were so happy. Peace of Earth. So we're sitting watching tv a week later & the doorbell rings. I open it & in rush the evil twins. Right behind them was the Scottish guy. You have to appreciate a Scots accent to appreciate what he said next - "I'm bringin' 'em back. I counna take it anymore, their peeing all over the place!" Hell on Earth was back.

Eventually we found a home for Kutchen - an older woman took her in & from what I understand the dog was no problem. It fact, it was treated like a little princess (right, princess of darkness). Koffee stayed on. After the divorce I didn't see much of Koffee ( the one redeeming value of the divorce). Eventually she went to that Home Depot in the sky where I assume she had an eternal supply of wall paper & floor tiles.

And those are my doggies - the good, the bad, the beautiful.

The Center Of The Solar System

Contrary to popular belief, the Sun was not the center of the solar system when I was a kid. The center of the solar system back then was 186 Chestnut St. Everything & everyone revolved around it. And I didn't call it the Sun - I called it home. It's rays didn't reach far - only a 1/2 block down to Bergen Ave & a 1/2 block the opposite way to Boyd St. As I got older it reached a few blocks further, but gravity always pulled me back to my sun.

My father's parents owned the house & they lived on the first floor while we lived on the second. In fact, my father was born in that house & shared it with four siblings.

It was a non-descript house on a block of non-descript houses. Mostly 2-family homes built around 1900 with narrow alleys between them. There were no front yards really, as the sidewalks almost brushed the porches. The backyards were small. I guess the average house was 50' wide & 75' - 100' deep. The street was just wide enough for 2 cars to narrowly pass each other while avoiding the parked cars on each side.

The sun, years later & deteriorating.




We lived in the 4 rooms upstairs. I shared a small bedroom with my year-younger sister until we moved out of the house when I was 12, having lived there all 12 years of my life. What was neat was the wooden ladder in the hallway which led up to a large, mostly empty attic. That was our playground when it rained.

My grandparents downstairs had 5 rooms with the dining room as the centerpiece for all holiday ocassions. The living room could be sealed off by its sliding wood doors. The basement was a dark, dreay place with the furnance & with a very long work bench with all sorts of tools that I did not understand. My uncle used to skin & fillet the rabbits down there that he had hunted for. Yuck. There was a small dirt filled extention that my grandfather used to store the wine he made - dandelion wine also, I'm told.

I remember my grandmother once toasting her bread over the open flame of her stove. Don't ask me why. I remember her with her high pitch yelling through the kitchen window at my sister for throwing stones at the window. "Sissy...SissyLynne...stop throwing stones at the window." Only they weren't stones - my grandmother's kitchen curtains were on fire & she mistook the crackling for stones! Another time my sister & I were down the block playing when the fire trucks rolled by. Excited, we chased after them, only to have them stop at our house & the firemen rush in. It was quite a shock for us. Turned out to be a furnace problem.

As I said, this was the center of the solar system & as proof to that fact there were always aunts, uncles, cousins & other relatives & friends of my grandparents drawn to it & stopping over all the time - especially during a holiday. The house attracted a lot of people.

I used to be terrified taking the garbage out -the alley was very narrow & pitch black. I just knew all sort of killers & evil-doers awaited each time I went out there. To this day I swear I heard the sound of a ufo land in our backyard, but was too terrified to go look. But night wasn't scary at Halloween. I tried to stay out as late as I could to get that one more candy bar or gum or nickel.

Until I was about 8-9, most of my school friends were on that block. Freddy Kennedy lived next door as did Barbara Boyle. Across the street was Evelyn March & down from her was Marion & Barbara Smart & next to them was Neil Armstrong. Further down on my side was Jerry & Dickie Watt. Next to them was an older kid I only knew as B-Boy. Frankie Degnan lived on the corner of Boyd in a 12 family building & around the corner from him was Sherry Fulton. Opposite Frankie were the O'neill sisters - but they were a few years older. Our backyard faced the backyard of Bobby Brown on Devon St. There was Rose & Tom McNish around the corner on Boyd St - sometimes I hated them. They being Irish, whenever Notre Dame won a football game they got to have pizza for supper. I know I've left some kids out. The evil VanDerLippe's lived across the street & they were always yelling at us for playing by their house. But the were about 160 yrs old & died off soon.

On the corner of Boyd & Chestnut stood a very small store - the only one nestled amongst the houses that ran down the streets in that area. For us kids it was our Mecca, for our parents it was a convenience. Harry's Candy Store. Harry & Thelma, his wife, owned it. They looked about 97 yrs old to us. Harry was a short, skinny guy & Thelma was the taller, heavy-set partner. Any extra pennies we had went to Harry in exchange for the yummy candy, loose & packaged, that he sold. We would collect soda bottles & bring them to Harry, where they were redeemed for cash - 2 cents a small bottle, a nickel for a large bottle. The proceeds went straight back to Harry after we hemmed & hawed about what candy to get. He sold other things I suppose, like milk & cereal & sugar & cigarettes & whatever parents needed, but that wasn't kid's stuff so we never paid attention. Thelma died one year & Harry ran the store for some years afterward, then he closed it. I ran into Harry once years later when I was an adult & he looked the same. I wanted to smack him for closing the store.

The street was our playground - roller skating, gutter ball, biking, hop-scotch, box ball, kick-the-can, tag & it's variations like freeze-tag & Chinese tag, hide-n-seek & whatever else. We used the four corners at Boyd St, as bases for box ball & stick ball. Back then most families had only one car, so there was room to play on the street.

The street had a fair amount of trees - & no they were not chestnut trees - oak & maple mostly. The one thing great about the trees, besides shade in the summer heat, was when the leaves fell in the Fall. There were a series of piles of the collected leaves along the gutter running down the block. We used to jump in the piles & hide under them. The adults would burn the leave piles - don't tell today's code officers about that! The smell of the burning leaves on a crisp Fall day was great - I still love that smell.

If I had to pick anytime in my life when life was the best, when things were simple & uncomplicated, it would be those years.

The sun - my house - became unstable when I was 11. My grandmother died. Things just didn't seem the same after that. There were less visitors, a more somber feeling or maybe a feeling of profound change. I still had my friends -but things were different. When I was 12 the sun - my house - imploded. My grandfather died suddenly. As irony would have it, the sun killed him. He was 71 & decided to paint it on a ladder in August when it was 90 degrees out. Duh. Heart attack, no heart attack, heart attak, no heart attack - watcha ya think? Two of his children, my aunt & uncle, quickly sold off the house - for $11,000, down from an asking price of $18,000. My parents, my sister & I were quickly evicted & moved to a 6-family apartment 3 blocks away. It was another solar system altogether. But it was never & never could be my sun - my home. My home was still at 186 Chestnut St - but now filled with strangers in my room, in my attic.

I hate change.

The Flu Made Me A Conservative

It was Junior year of high school. Springtime...because I say so. Having spent a miserable week in-doors in bed with the flu & not sure that there was an out-doors anymore, I was finally allowed to leave the confines of our little railroad apartment & venture into "fresh air". (By the way, don't you just have a feeling of all-out love for the kid that brings you all the homework you missed? Uh, yeah)

It was magnificent sitting on the open porch - the sun, the breeze, trees with leaves even. After an hour of this crap I was bored. Not being an avid reader at the time unless the dialogue was wrapped in a balloon , I mosyied?, mosied?, mozied?, walked the 3 blocks to the magazine store.

Unfortunately, all they had were...magazines. Some comics, but who the hell read Little Lulu? So I looked at the magazines. Time, Look, Life, US News, all the usual things I saw in a doctor's office (having been a recent visitor to one). My eye caught the cover of this one magazine. Can't remember what the heck was on the cover. And it was kinda thin for a magazine.

Well, I flipped through it. Lotta words in that little thing. Where were all the pictures? But then an article caught my eye. Forget what the article was about, something about politics, but I read it even though there was no balloon around it. I was like, wow, yeah they are soo right. I went on to skim a few other articles & columns & like wow, they are soo right too. So between Little Lulu & this mag, the mag won.

Got home, went back onto the porch & devoured the magazine. It was so right. Everything they said. I never knew political philosophies really existed, much less me having one. But it was all there in front of me. I found a voice for what I loosely felt, but could never define or even think of defining.

That magazine was William F. Buckely's National Review. It told me what I didn't know - that I was a Conservative. From that moment on I had a political philosophy. And each issue of the magazine from then on reaffirmed that.

I still am a Conservative after all these years & still read the mag on line. So I guess maybe the flu was worth it that year. And I'm still looking for that kid who brought me such joy.