Neighbors: Buddy

Author note:  Back in July, I wrote that I intended to publish a series based on  "Neighbors" . There are a dozen or so essays. This is neighbor #1.

Mr.and Mrs. Gordon and Buddy were the landlords in the first home I can remember.  Mrs. Gordon was a tiny woman, not much bigger than me, or so it seemed. She had shiny black hair, dark eyes, and a sprinkle of freckles across her small pointed nose. She wore dark rimmed glasses, tucked into her straight hair, and she had bangs too.  I didn’t know any grownup ladies with bangs.  She talked very little to us, our family of six, as we trooped in and out of the front door and up the stairs to make our family noises in the apartment over her head. 

Mr.Gordon was a large, smiley man with a rosy kind of complexion that reminded me of Santa, at the time. He towered over Mrs. Gordon and smoked cigarettes with the tobacco spilling out of one end. And then there was Buddy, and well, Buddy was the best part of our landlords.  Buddy was an overweight, mild mannered Dalmatian dog, with pale blue eyes, and large black spots across his short-haired white coat.  His black spots stretched particularly wide across his middle. Buddy let me pet him on his flattish, warm head for as long as Mr. Gordon would stand still with him.  It was never long enough for me.   

Having a dog live downstairs was the highlight of my five year old life. For as long as I remembered, I had begged for a dog, but “apartment life is not for dogs” my mother told me time after time. While my friend Laura had a vast collection of dolls that she displayed all over her bed, I preferred my collection of stuffed dogs. There was a collie named Laddie with a long rubberized snout, in a lying down position, a couple of mutts that my mother won at the church bazaar, and a large floppy eared one who was blue with a top hat.  I could hardly take him seriously, what with his color and all. My most favorite one was a black poodle with rubbery kind of feet that actually walked along, when pulled gently with his narrow red plastic leash, just like a real dog.  I called him Fifi.

But I was most intrigued by Buddy, since he was the real thing.  I was told constantly by my mother "not to “bother Mr.Gordon” (hang out on the steps with begging and pleading in my eyes) every time he took Buddy for a walk.  Buddy had no children in his house, and I had no dog in mine.  I thought we were a perfect match for each other.

One day, as I sat hopefully on the brick stoop, Mr.Gordon came out with Buddy to go for a walk, and as I was petting him, his dog breath smelly against  my face, Mr. Gordon gestured with his big hand, and asked “You wanna walk him for a bit?’

Oh boy!  I was on my feet in an instant.  I couldn’t believe I’d be allowed me to walk Buddy up the block.  The black leather leash, worn brown in spots, felt just right in my hands.  I was to use both hands to hold Buddy, Mr.Gordon said “now hold on tight”.  Buddy stood by me, quietly panting and waiting.  As we started to walk, I was stricken with an attack of giggling, it was just that exciting.  I could be walking in a dog show.  I could be a Princess walking my royal dog.  I was the new proud owner of this spotted, waddling beauty.  I was so happy! 

Mr.Gordon walked closely behind, smoking his cigarette, but I paid him no attention.  I was walking Buddy!  We’d only gone maybe three houses up the block, when Buddy spotted the Laffys’ cat Tommy sitting in the driveway.  He gave a huge lunge, and splat, down I went, the leash yanked out of my fingers as I hit the sidewalk on my knees, and cried out.

Mr.Gordon lifted me up and called to Buddy.  He tried to brush me off a bit, but my feelings were more scraped up than my skinned knees. The walk was over.  I had had my moment of fame and it was glorious.  I knew I would try again, though it might take me a long while to talk Mr. Gordon into letting me.  But not too long afterward, we moved.  It was Buddy that I missed. 

 

Miss Watkinson

It was Jay’s comment about the caterpillar webs that he saw on the side of the thruway.  We were traveling north, on our way to Canada for a week’s vacation.  “Oh no” I think I even slapped my head “I forgot to tell you about the caterpillar web.  It was this big”; I spread my hands wide to illustrate, “in the birch tree.  I forgot all about it, it was probably two weeks ago that I saw it.” As he drove, I saw his face register surprise, then resignation.  So many things we both tend to forget these days, while juggling jobs, household, garden, and other obligations; a symptom of lives too busy.  “I was going to knock it out, but I wanted to show you.  I thought you might want to set fire to it or something”, I finished lamely.  “Smoke ‘em’” Jay shouted over the whistling air from his open window “You have to smoke ‘em out.”
 

Miss Watkinson shifted into my minds’ eye.  A flashback of my youth.  She was petite, with skin so white and papery, one could almost write a letter on it.  She wore metal rimmed glasses, her dark grey eyes sharp and attentive behind them and navy blue dresses all the time, or so I remembered, or so it seemed.  The dresses were forties styles, tailored, modest.  Most were solid, but some had a small flower pattern. Sometimes, a lace-edged hankie poked out of a pocket at the top. Sensible shoes on her very small feet.  She drove a small, sensible, grey sedan.

Miss Watkinson lived in a rustic log cabin on the north shore of Long Island, in a thickly wooded hamlet called Mt. Sinai.  In the 1950’s, there were summer ‘bungalows’ tucked into those mountain- laureled woods, and the summers were made for kids to bike up and down the tarred and sanded roads, go to the beach as much as possible, and catch lightening bugs in jars at night while the grownups gathered around an outside fire, telling stories and having a few beers.  We were city kids who arrived pasty and white the day after school let out, and went back to the city like browned pecans the day after Labor Day, to get ready for school.

Miss Watkinson lived in a cabin across the way, and down the road a little.  My Mother said she ‘went to business’, and lived there all year long, even the winter.  I couldn’t imagine it.  But that was why we hardly ever saw her, my mother said, and business was down in Wall Street, in New York City.  We never knew, and never asked what she did there.  My mother often commented  ‘’She leaves in the dark and comes home in the dark, what a strange life”.  Sometimes we saw her on the weekends; my Mother would say on Saturday mornings to my uncle “I saw Minnie out and about earlier”.

Minnie.  When I was young, I could only equate her with Minnie Mouse – who else had a name like that? Her dark grey, curly, close cropped hair could easily have sprouted rounded ears, like the Mouseketeers.  And she wore those black, rounded, sturdy shoes, and she was very quiet.  Miss Watkinson’s smokin’ em out forays  were the hot dinnertime topic that night at the small pine table, at the edge of the knotty pine paneled living room.  Probably we were eating a salad of iceberg lettuce with tomato wedges and French dressing, corn on the cob, and fried chicken.  I was a tireless chicken leg eater. 

Earlier, my mother had stopped the car to chat with Miss Watkinson on our way to the farm stand.  Miss W was wearing her Saturday brown trousers, and some nun-looking brown oxfords, well worn and scuffed.  Her shirt was of a soft fabric, buttoned down the front. She told my mother, in a quiet, precise manner, that she would be ”smoking them out” that very evening, as soon as it started to get dark.  Miss W was after the yellow jackets, my mother told my uncle over dinner.  “She waits until they go into their nest to sleep, and then she puts gasoline on a rag and winds it around a tall stick and sets fire to it, and then she said “and Margaret, I smoke them out.”  “Well saints preserve us”, my mother had intoned, as we drove away slowly.

 

That Empty Lot

I passed that empty lot this morning on a road I rarely travel these days.  A few years back, the road was my daily route on my way to a job where I arrived each day, armed with resolve and swallowing trepidation, and left each evening sadder, scraped over, diffused.

It wasn’t an empty lot then. It was a home, a blue trailer that had perhaps once been the blue of robins' eggs. It set back from the road a bit; it was neat, well cared for; plain, unadorned.  There was a single rose bush that stood off center in the front yard, maybe five feet high.  Slightly neglected curtains hung limply, yet neatly, in the two small front windows.  Three wooden steps led quietly up to the door.  The yard was clean and trim, grass mown in season. I never saw a person there in the morning or at quitting time, but I decided it was an elderly man living alone.   

Each spring daffodils appeared.  They grew thickly in a long fat row, not directly in front of the house, but kind of off to the side a bit; slightly off-kilter.  Each year I wondered, maybe even hoped, that he would thin them out, move them, arrange them more symmetrically. But of course he did not. 

Still, I delighted in the daily increments of their growth, in as much as my ten seconds of drive-by observation allowed. First, the early green sprouts peeping through, then the lengthening shoots reaching up, up, up; then the small buds, and at last, those proud yellow faces, nodding and satisfied.  They lit up the whole yard with their sunny yellow determination. I wondered if I would catch a glimpse of him. But of course I did not.

Occasionally, random items appeared on the neat, front lawn, with a small hand lettered sign “for sale” propped next to them.  A tire, some glass bottles, an old but serviceable lawnmower.  One day, a bowling ball, visible in its cracked leather bag.  Another week, there stood a leaning clothes rack, with men’s and women’s clothes hanging on it.  A beige coat, some slacks, a bright orange sweater.  How did one buy these things?  Where did a person pay? Who did you pay?  Where would you park on the busy road?  There was no driveway; no car. Maybe I would see him coming out to make a sale.  But of course I did not. 

In winter, the snow was cleared; a small, narrow path to the three front steps. No Christmas adornments, no lights.  After I left the job, with a cardboard box of my desk contents, I gave no more thought to the trailer and my daily musings about him.

So it was with a jolt of surprise last year that I found myself going down that road again.  There sat the trailer, a blackened remnant of its neat old self.  Charred and tattered furniture spilled out of one twisted end of the trailer; the vinyl roof bent forwards like a gaping mouth ready to pounce.  On my way to an appointment, I could only wonder sadly what had happened, and when, and if he was safe.

Today, as I neared that section of road, I steeled myself for the site.  But, another surprise:  the lot is clear - all green grass well-tended, with one rose bush, about five feet high, sitting slightly off center in the yard.

Not one whisper of a life lived there.  

Birthdays Stir Things Up

Birthdays stir things up.  The child anticipates, the adult dreads.  The child yearns to increase his number, telling everyone in the months preceding the fifth birthday – I am four and three quarters!  Then, the years pile onto the number, like ants on a log, stubble on a chin, dandelions in a summer lawn.  Folks start to say “it’s just another day”; “I don’t celebrate anymore”; “Ach, who needs em?” “Nothing special”.

A very little girl with soft formed curls stands on a chair in an pale organdy dress, a bow clamped on the side of her head as big as a bird in flight.  A few tanned children sit around the table looking up at her.  A basket of flowers, its handle tall and rounded.  Her uncle helps her to cut the cake, his hand on the knife over hers.  Who took the picture?  Where were her parents? He seemed so in charge.  Birthdays stir things up.  

A pre-teen with budding breasts in a sailor shirt;  a lanky teen with bad skin, shorn hair and a guarded smile;  a young woman with flashy, hanging earrings and a smile made brighter by her first legal drink, holds up a gift of a used shirt and a half filled bottle of Canoe at the Seaweed tavern.  Birthdays stir things up.

A navy blue tube top, and the young Mother wears an annoyed (or is it sad, resigned?) smile on her face directed at the picture taker.  She holds up a chocolate chip cookie, as big as a pizza pie and frosted with her name, next to her bony neck.  Her pre-teen daughter looks on, serious.

Denim cut-offs and braless, she poses with a Burger King crown on her head, happy with her newly pierced ears at age thirty.  She’d been inspired by Barbara Streisand in a Star is Born.  The perm came shortly after, but it turned out more like Harpo Marx.  Birthdays stir things up.

The sisters had a cake; she’d been dropped off at the local airport by a friend in his private plane; he’d taken her to Hyannis for the weekend.  She looked tanned and happy as she cut the cake, but her son leaned in at her elbow, looking up at her with an awful face; she’d gone away for the weekend and left him behind.  Birthdays stir things up.

A Hostess  twinkie with a single candle and a single friend.  She yearned for her children.  

Three small boys, strangers to her, entered the small shop where she worked and announced “we have a message for you”, then lined up and sang Happy Birthday.  Wonderful!

A landmark dinner with her daughter and best friends. Laughter and friendship and love, tucked into one of those very intricate parts of brain and heart, encapsulated for retrieval when needed.

Another landmark: water sculptures along the Hudson with family; the memorable dinner; the thrill of seeing all those loved faces around the table; the new baby in her pink sunsuit chewing on a chunk of bread.

A trip to Brooklyn, a huge surprise, her son hiding in the corner of the living room, all the way from Tennessee.  Birthdays stir things up.  

Strangford Loch, Ireland.  The chef came out in checkered pants and big puffy chef’s hat and led a three cheers salute for the very big landmark day.  Hip Hip Hooray! 

Harmonica serenade, singing phone messages, attempted whistling message, unexpected flowers delivered, cards, small messages of love and joy.  A day of ease, painting, Priscilla Queen of the Desert,   A quiet dinner with a quiet man…Birthdays stir things up.     

Silly Pants

Silly pants
You can dance!

Smarty pants
You can dance!



Eggplants
Silly rants
Horses prance


Fancy pants
You can dance!

Safety dance!

In a trance

Cheese pants

Go to France
Safety dance!


sillypants - Urban dictionary

1. A very silly and random word used as a gentle repercussion or insult.
2. When used with certain expletives the word becomes stronger.

1. "Hey, sillypants, stop raiding the fridge!"
2. "Hey f****** sillypants, the door's over there, you're walking into a wall!"

Bad Back Whining

Arnica, schmarnica
Rub it in with your palmica
For the pain in left lower
That is caused by up righter
Then spreads acrosser like
A fireball on a Mexican desert

Sit this way, stand that
Put chin in, squeeze buttocks
Sleep with the pillow, always
Between knees like a fluffy monster hand

Lift this way, carry that

Don’t bend, don’t wear heels
Eat green vegetables
Don’t worry about the hump
Camels have them, don’t they?
Do they need chiropractors?
Sadists?

Lie this way, breathe that

Wet pads, hot weights on back
Heavy like a dead lover
Rest for thirteen seconds
Lucky or not
Ready or not

Dreaming with electro-men
dancing, jolting, waltzing
Needling this way,
Charging that.

Wake up! 
Walk this way!
How did that feel?

                                                writer's note:  past experience, not present

Neighbors

Author note:  This is an intro to a series of essays on "Neighbors" that I have worked on for longer than I care to admit.  There are a dozen or so essays.  I intend to publish some of them here.  I invite you to comment.

Howdy Neighbor!

I got to thinking about the houses I’ve lived in throughout my life.  The rooms, the hallways, the alleyway below my window, the city block, the country road, the dead end scary street, the village, the hillside, the road view, the woods view, the pond view.

I got to thinking of some of those folks who shared each neighborhood with me. Neighbor: One who lives near or is adjacent to another; a fellow human being.  Neighbors, the ones who waved or greeted or nodded each day as we passed each other on the street, or jumped in and out of our cars, or sped out of driveways and down the road.  The ones who lived their lives mysteriously, moving in and around street corners with just a shadow behind them, those I never got to know.  Yes, they left their impression also.  There were some who helped out in a dire emergency and I was thankful enough to kiss their feet at the time, but soon afterward, when all the hoopla died down, we reverted to the nod and the wave.  I know people who moved from their family abode to their married home where they live out their entire adult lives, changing wallpaper and paint color and upholstery and cabinets, but knowing their rooms like the very skin on the back of their hands, knowing the view from their kitchen window as they know their morning face in the mirror; the passage of years may adjust some of the settings, but the face, and the view remain the same.

How curious to me, an inquisitive nomad, though truth be told, I bop, not across the globe, but merely from state to state and back again, from one part of the same town to another; across the street once, and  another time, merely next door. Surprisingly, even that move offered its surprises, its own change of “guard”, different neighbors.  Neighbors up, neighbors down, next door, or across the way. I once had a neighbor for eight years who I never saw or met, but each evening, in the wintertime, when I brushed my teeth, I could see the light on in his house through the stripped down woods. Oddly, no matter what time I went to bed, that light was on. For me, neighbors are a unique subset. 

Neighbors play bit parts in our stage career of life. Maybe they are the lighting crew, the curtain man, the coffee gopher.  But maybe, just maybe, they are the ones we remember.  They are a distinctive category of people who appear to stroll, race walk, plow, amble, insinuate, and exist in our lives. We know they are there, like we know a thorn has nestled itself into the skin of our thumb, or as we feel the first spring breeze across our cheeks, without acknowledging its caress. Neighbors may not offer the type of kinship or camaraderie as our coworkers, who are bound by the unwritten mores of job related dealings; the ones with which we spend eight hours locked into professional combat. The ones who ask every Monday morning “How was your weekend?” (Of course my neighbor might know I never left the house all weekend) Nor do neighbors usually possess the ingredients required for the bond of friendship, though some do make that grade.  Now and then we experience an over the backyard fence type of neighbor.  More often than not, they become the reason for the fence.  In urban settings, our closest neighbors can remain strangers, with only their nine to five heels clicking intimately past our door each morning on their way to the elevator. 

This novella, therefore, I dedicate to all the neighbors who claim a spark in my memory, from my early roots in Queens, New York, on to the hills of Northwestern New Jersey, and right on up to the Hudson Valley in glorious New York State. All the names have been changed to protect the neighbors’ identities.  I hope you’ll enjoy the neighborhoods.