story # 6

our new house and the one next door

by bob gottlieb

copyright © 1992-2012 Bob Gottlieb, all rights reserved.

        Next door to my parent's house was this very large and different house with a copious amount of windows, four doors, one on each of the 4 exterior walls, and a basement coal chute no longer used for coal, but still holding a couple of scuppers full of coal and a whole lot of wonderful black dust in its basement bin.  It had a big covered porch that encircled the house, with ornately carved pillars and railings.   These railings served as a barrier between the house and that which lay outside by connecting the pillars between the three sets of stairs.  Handrails that matched the pillars for beauty and design framed each set of stairs.  The house was two stories high with an attic filled with wonderful dormer windows looking out to all sides of the house.  These windows served as passageways for light into the small attic rooms that served as closets or places of seclusion.  The dark, cool basement had one section finished as a workshop and tool room for Mr. Singular.  [His first name was Howdy, but I called him Mr. Singular always.]   The coal bin took up the rest of the basement.

        The grounds of the property were furnished in haphazard fashion with lots and lots of trees that were mostly on the west side of the house.  There were maples that had seeds like pinwheels (because they looked like a pinwheel when they were dropped from a height) or Pinocchio noses (because you could split them and attach them to your nose to look like Pinocchio), shady oaks, and sycamore or plane trees with the fuzz bombs for seeds.  These were great for attacking other kids or especially keeping younger brothers away.  The trees led into a wood on the west blending around towards the north.   On the north side of the house there were only pine trees growing.  All the trees were old growth and thus very tall. The oaks and sycamores were covered with numerous branches for climbing or hiding.  I remember one of the sycamore trees you could climb to a spot level with the west dormer window of the attic, and with the little platform outside the window it was only a short and easy (if you didn't look down) jump into the attic from the wonderful supportive branches of the tree.

        The outside of the house always looked pleasantly weathered, particularly as one came closer.  Mr. Singular was very clever and his house had last been painted a gray color.  When it peeled and cracked it didn't really show from the distance.  It added more character to the place.

        Inside it was a house of many hues and colors.  Not always were the colors actually different colors, but rather textures of the same color.  The arrangement of both furniture and light and the shape of the usable portion of the room established the mood of the rooms.  I remember the smoking room, which was in the front of the house, was a tan color.  The walls were done in a brocade tan wallpaper, the wood floors were tan, the tongue in groove ceiling was tan, all the furnishings in the room were tan.  Yet the room had not the slightest appearance of being monochromatic.  It was a lively feeling room that we were always trying to sneak into when we played hide and go seek.  It had all these nooks and crannies that light reached only at various different times of the day depending upon the season.  You could hide in this one little cranny in the winter even though you were in plain sight, but in the summer time the angle of the light shifted and you were exposed to the glare.  In addition that room always had the warm and rich aroma of Mr. Singular's pipe.  Every room in the house, and there were 5 bedrooms, a sewing room, and 1 bathroom upstairs, and 6 rooms downstairs; obviously the kitchen, the dining room, the afore mentioned smoking room, a library with a piano, the living room, and a den, plus 2 bathroom, and 2 big closets and the alcove containing the stairs to the cellar had an individual personality.  Each room's clearly defined character depended on either occupant or use, and the eccentricities displayed by the rooms did not always mesh except on the grandest of levels.

         We lived next to the Singular family for about 12 years, and I remember their house better than I remember my own.  I think I might have spent more time, particularly if you do not count time spent asleep, in their house than in my own.  I always had access to the house through the dormer window that was always kept unlocked, the Singular's seemed always to be glad when they noticed us, which was not every time I was there.  It was just one of those busy households where an extra body or two went unnoticed until there was cause to notice.  I got to be friends with their oldest boy the day we moved in.

         My parents had hired a moving van company to move our stuff from the old house, on the outskirts of town, to this new house, even further out on the fringe of the town.  We were the only two houses on the street.  We were surrounded by farmlands, wood, and the animals they contained.  I think each house sat on an acre, at any rate a big chunk of land.  We also had a stand of oaks and maples and all manner of deciduous trees and ours were on the east side of our house.  If you are of good memory, and put it to use, you will recollect that their house was east of ours, and you will come to the conclusion that there might be a distinct possibility that our deciduous trees and their deciduous trees might meet and form a great recreational forest for kids to have adventures in, and you would be correct.  If the mood so moved us Oscar Singular and I could play Tarzan and go from house to house without touching the ground, except when we came to our house because it was small and had no dormers.  We had two tree houses, one was hidden from everyone including parents, so Oscar and I could escape the littler kids, and one was the one our parents built for us that was big enough for all the kids.   My parents eventually had a big garden, enough was grown to feed us, the insects, our distant relatives, and still have some to donate to the poor.  We had a big fenced area for the dog, a badminton area, and a big clear level spot to play football or baseball.   However there were not enough kids for players when we first moved. There was Oscar and myself, we were the two older boys and we were 10, my brother Tommy and Oscar's twin brothers Howie and Bowie they were all of 7.  Then Oscar had a sister, Cloue, aged 5 1/2, who got in the way all the time when we first moved there (that did change about 7 years down the road, but those stories are for later).  She liked to play with her brother's tanks and soldiers right in the middle of whatever we were doing, or she would follow us around everywhere.

         The Singular family consisted of these four children and Mr. Singular, whom you have already met, Mrs. Singular, or Claire as she was known to adults, was the visitor from outer space, she had a very high and strong voice and didn't talk, but sang all her utterances.  She had weird eyes, and was the mother of all these children.  Her mother also lived there and she was named Miss Kupute.  She generally just talked to herself though and no one paid her much mind.  We always considered her a bit daft.  Then there was Grandmother Singular.   Gran, all 6 foot 5 inches and 240 pounds of her was a force to be reckoned with.   She had a voice so deep she made foghorns sound as if they had taken a hard shot to the groin.  They were all jealous of her.  She had to whisper instead of talk otherwise the bill for broken windows would have been enormous.  To round out the neighborhood population, there was my mother and father, AKA mom and dad.  He was a brilliant man who kept quiet and read.  My mother was a professional teacher who loved to be involved in something.  She quit teaching to raise us, then went back into the school system for a short time.  I don't remember her as a good cook while we were growing up, as we always had canned vegetables, but she sure could cook potatoes and in many different ways.  Now with the use of fresh vegetables in her lexicon of cooking she has raised her culinary skills to very pleasant heights.  Funny with all the canned vegetables we ate as children, I always like vegetables and still do.  My brother abhorred them, and last time I saw him he still had not become a fan.

         Back to the day the moving company brought all our stuff to the new house, and we had the distinct pleasure of meeting the Singulars.  We arrived about an hour before the moving company so we could supervise their work and thus have less to do later.  Since the moving truck wasn't there yet, I decided to escape from the rest of the family and particularly Tommy, and I went exploring the grounds.   I was in the woods when I heard an owl hoot, or I thought I did.  I started looking around trying to find it.  I had been walking in my best imitation of Indian quietness so I wouldn't frighten any wild animals that might be lurking.   With the owl hoot I was now was attempting to do my imitation of a tree that is resting in a calm.  Suddenly BOING something bopped me right square in the middle of the head.  I bet I set a record for the vertical jump, and probably my voice, though octaves higher than (the yet to be met) Gran's, was almost as loud as her real voice when not whispering, with the involuntary surprised yowl that came forth.  Just as I turned my eyes to the canopy of tree limbs there came another BOING.   Something skidded down my forehead and ran off my nose.  I fell down with another howl of pain.  My eyes angrily searching among the limbs for this accurate mad bomber.  Some of the plane tree limbs were so thick that a small person could hide behind them.  There, in the tree just to the right of me was some faint flicker of movement.  A figure shaking with internal laughter was more apparent when I moved to the left cautiously.   There was this kid about my age with a whole supply of fuzz bombs sniggering (a snigger is just like a laugh except the sound is made by a deep breath drawn in through a partially stuffed nose) his head off quite uncontrollably.

         I was ready to kill this sniggering stranger who had the temerity to bop an innocent explorer, but there was no branch I could grab hold of in the tree he was occupying.  I didn't know how he got there and that worried me.  Now he was sniggering very loudly, and that was getting me even madder.  I was becoming maniacal enough to start spluttering at him, that if he ever came down I was going to rip off his legs and kick him all over the woods with his own appendages.  Then make him eat grub and snail soup for a 100 days.  He got serious at the last threat and stopped his silly sniggering and starred down at me.  He asked in his rather high squeally voice if I'd like to know how to get up in the tree.

        I glared at him and replied, "Of course I do you slug."

      " I don't think I should tell you if you're in that kind of mood." He said with a shaking head.  "Promise you won't hurt me and I'll tell you?"

        I gave him my reassurances.  However I kept my fingers crossed behind my back, just in case I still wanted to follow through on my threat.

        "My name is Oscar.  What's yours?" Then he pointed and said,  "Go over to the maple tree and climb up on the west side of it."  His head now nodded in the direction I was supposed to go, as I guess my ignorance about east and west, and different trees was like a neon sign on my face.  I was beginning to slowly calm down and be not quite so angry because he wasn't laughing at me for not knowing things.  Now as I was walking to the tree and was thinking about what had occurred, I guess I probably did look exceedingly funny yelping after getting hit on the head.  Ohh, various diabolical plans concerning little brother Tommy raced through my mind, each one more dire and devious than the previous one.  Possibilities for torture a plenty here for the most annoying slug in the universe.  I started smiling when I thought about it.

         "Hey my name is Reggie, and don't worry I won't hurt you.  I want to know how you get from this tree to yours."  I said as I eyed the intervening 20 feet between our trees.   I was standing on the lowest branch of the maple and looking with puzzlement at the gaping distance.  "Honest I won't."  I was quite sure now I meant what I said so I held up my hands so he could see my fingers,  "Look."  I promptly lost my balance and had to grab hold desperately to keep from falling out of the tree.  This started him sniggering again.

         When he finally stopped he guided me through the trees over to his lofty perch, which was big enough for the two of us to sit on and be very well hidden from the uninitiated pleebs down on the ground.  Those sycamores do have big fat limbs that are perfect for all sorts of nefarious activities.  The whole time we sat up there getting acquainted I was thinking about how to use this knowledge I had come into possession of to get even with my little brat brother.  I started telling him about Tommy, then he told me about Howie and Bowie.   After I got over laughing about their names so hard I almost fell out of the tree, we made a pact right then and there in the tree to torment all of them.   Not only torment them but, not get caught by our parents.

         When I say torment, please don't take me wrong.  We had no desire to kill, maim, or mutilate our younger siblings in any way.  No, we just wanted to make their lives absolutely miserable to make up for all that they did that we got blamed for.  In addition we went through all the trouble of training our parents correctly, and they never have thanked us in any way for the job we did.  I guess the main reason we hated them so, is because they were available.  It also gave us a common enemy to focus our torture on.  We decided we wanted Job's trials to look like a warm-up compared to what we would do to them.  No, it wasn't even always the doing that was the best thing, but the devising of the tortures, even if they were never done.

         Oscar then started showing me about traveling around in the trees, I swear he was part ape the way he moved in the trees.  He was always having to wait for me that first day.  Guess you develop tree legs, a close cousin to sea legs, because after two or three days I was causing fewer and fewer delays.  I knew I was doing better because he stopped turning around to check on me quite so often.  After 2 weeks he didn't bother turning around to check on me anymore.   At least not to check on how I was doing or how far behind I was.  By the end of these two weeks I was also not getting lost as much in the trees and thus having to drop to the ground.  No longer did all the trees look like just trees to me any longer.  Now they were becoming individual entities, there was the maple with the knot above the first big branch, the plane tree where the red squirrel lived, and the oak with the lightening struck top.  All these and many more valuable markers in our fight to avoid putting feet to the terra firma.  I think it was at the end of my first month that we were having races in the trees.  I did not beat him in a race for a long time, but the races grew steadily more competitive.

 

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