Door to the Past

February 15, 2009

Late on Valentine’s Day, I was in line at the local Rite-Aid drugstore. A young man in front of me was carrying an enormous teddy bear, a gift for the young woman in his life. The thing cost the astounding sum of over thirty dollars. He paid this, then went into the store’s aisles to retrieve some other remembrance of the day. It was a box of candy with raised lettering attesting to the heartfelt sentiment that lay behind its purchase. The next woman in line, with hair carefully bleached to an unnaturally white color and wispy texture, said that someone was going to be happy upon receiving the generous gifts. I suppressed the natural urge to say this: “Someone’s gonna get laid.”

I waited my turn, taking in the Cupid’s day scenario with typical skepticism and callousness. I thought to the day not too far away, when the cuddly bear would be strewn across a lawn with the rest of a home’s eviction contents. Its partners in the front yard tableau would be broken-down tv stands, a sofa scratched by a hungry dog,
lamps and compact disc cases, a telephone. Maybe next week the young man and his woman would no longer be together. The end of the month would come, would send him this Valentine’s message with his credit card bill: There, among the gas-station charges and snack food items would be the thirty-odd dollars for the teddy bear, the chocolates.

The new girl has seen me several times, has said: “Oh you’re the guy who gets the Washington Post.” I waited my turn, said to her, “Do you have a Post for me?” These words made no sense to her whatsoever, might have been asking if she’d gotten the most recent transmission from Mars. Her eyes narrowed, suddenly she was not so friendly, not in the cuddly mood left over from the bear.
“Excuse me?” She said.
“The Washington Post. It’s a newspaper; sometimes you save it for me back there.” Now I was being a snot, something I hate being. But I can’t blame her at all: For her a post is a thing that holds up a fence, maybe a sign. She doesn’t speak the language of newspapers, probably doesn’t linger on the thought of why they exist in the first place. I would give a vast sum of money, maybe $1200, to be able to think like her for a whole day. Yes, $1200: I think that is a fair amount. The cigarette breaks out by the front door, filling my young and chubby body with poisonous smoke might be a hardship, but perhaps I could just pretend to take puffs. I don’t know why I’d actually have to inhale. I would make that an exception to the deal—no inhaling cigarette smoke. If I’m paying that kind of money, I shouldn’t have to inhale--that’s what I think. It’s likely that—if I paid my $1200 and was in fact able to be her for a day—I would never want to go back. Therein lies the danger.

She pulled a Washington Post from behind the counter, handed it to me. I only had a twenty dollar bill for the paper and a bottle of iced tea. I owed a dollar and some change. They young and pale cashier did not have enough change to give me for the large bill. The polite youngster with the teddy bear was still there, pondering other things to buy his sweetheart. He handed over a dollar, effectively buying my daily paper and a good portion of my iced tea as well. I wished the enthusiastic guy, fresh with youth and the promise of the day, the best possible Valentine’s Day ever. With a teddy bear like that, how could he go wrong?

Earlier I’d sold the old riding mower I’d bought several years ago to keep the yard tended. It was not too difficult to part with it: The paint was peeling and the seat was torn, but it ran well enough. It also sported the replacement fuel tank I’d installed due to the hole the squirrels had eaten in the old one. I was comforted with the thought of my anonymous handiwork being on display to new owners, in some other part of the state down by the eastern shore, for all the days until the mower coughed its final breath, spewed out its last shred of mown grass. This little tractor had come from a neighborhood up the street, had been sitting in front of a house during a community yard sale. I’d bought it on the spot, offering a hundred and fifty dollars. It looked to be in new condition at the time. With no shed out back, the mower had weathered several winters, summers, and everything in between under the deck. The deck does not provide much protection. So, little by little, the thing showed signs of wearing down, blistering off paint, then rusting. It still did the job, however, which was the main thing. The man on this grey and chilly day handed over two hundred dollars. I gave him a nice replacement seat and a set of brand-new mower blades from one of the many other machines that had passed through my hands, that I can’t even remember now. There have been so many. I drove it onto his little trailer, and watched as he strapped it into place for the drive home. Then, as people will do, he told me of his life. His father, for many years an abusive alcoholic, did not have a good relationship with the man. When he stopped drinking, however, things were fine. This man, somewhat older than I, rode Harley Davidson motorcycles and liked to ride to South Carolina on them. So did his woman, who also liked to ride. He lived in a part of the city where homes sold for next to nothing because no one wanted to live there any more. The people who stayed, he said, ran the risk of everything they had being stolen or broken. I told him that sometimes I bought lumber in that part of the town, and he described with some specificity where he lived with respect to the lumberyard. “Yes, it’s a real shithole,” I wanted to respond—but this is something he already knew; the remark would be superfluous.

He told me of the many rats that overran the area, his yard too. He spoke of sitting out back and shooting twenty, thirty, forty rats with his BB gun. I could not imagine so many rats, I told him. He said there were plenty of rats where he lived. I said that was a shame, about the rats, but he seemed to enjoy shooting them, and more or less had the situation under control. There was trash, too. The kids from the “projects” would throw their household trash into his backyard—or alley, I am not precise on the details. But he would find the culprits, throw the trash into their yards—because he would find the addresses of the people on discarded envelopes and things. A vivid portrait of the man unfolded there in the driveway: The endless cycle of clearing out trash and refuse, shooting at rats, chasing off the neighborhood mischief-makers, dealing with the riff-raff who had no pride in their neighborhood, did not want to be there, and did not want to take care of it, either. Suddenly my neighborhood looked a lot better. I was grateful for the time I spent with him, learning about life in an area not too far away—over in the next county.

We lingered there, enjoying each other’s company, and I finally bid him farewell. Waiting in the shed I’d erected a year or so ago was a nearly new riding mower given to me by a person in distress, who’d been left the thing by her husband, who had in turn left her. I’d driven out to her, picked it up in my truck. With its elaborate system for catching grass and bagging it, it was one of the nicest machines I’d ever owned. It was also a little smaller, and was a better fit for the cluttered shed. At home I’d fiddled with it a bit, thinking at first it was a hopeless case. After an oil change and a few other small attentions, the machine fired up and ran smoothly. I cut the winter grass, collecting the leaves and twigs in its huge bagging system. With this machine I would no longer be keeping up with the Joneses—I would BE the Joneses. God, this thing was nice. It was an improbable accessory to my lawn-keeping menagerie, since I am widely regarded as being fairly lax where mowing the lawn is concerned. The others in the neighborhood approach their lawns reverently, paying homage to them with seeds and fertilizer and other offerings. They are out there in all seasons, making sure that when the time comes, the lawn will have had as much encouragement from them to be the best lawn ever, to sprout up and beg to be beaten back by the whirling blades of a power mower. In all fairness, their yards DO look much nicer than mine. For one thing, large trees often drop twigs and branches onto the lawn, and I am not always expedient about clearing these obstacles out of the way. Sometimes I will do anything to mow AROUND them, if it means not getting off the garden tractor to pick them up. Or, if I think the recently-shed part of the tree is small enough, I will drive right over it and hope the blades will take care of the thing—grinding and gnashing and making the pieces smaller so that they are not so noticeable. This often works quite well. It is the larger branches that pose a problem.

March 25, 2009

Del came over, armed with his large work truck and power tools. When he and Ryan are over at the other house, they simply help themselves to my vast array of tools I leave about, as if they were casual decorative pieces—and functional ones at that. It is not that they don’t have their own tools—it’s just that wherever you look in the house you can find something that might be useful for the current project: A chop-saw here, a table saw in the middle of the room, some cordless drills and drivers, circular saws, reciprocating saws, tubes of caulk, cans of paint and drywall compound. It’s like a hardware store.

The project I’d laid out for Del was the installation of a new door that would serve as the rear entrance to the house. The little pantry, mostly untouched for the past seventy years or so, would serve as a mud-room and laundry room. Maybe “mud-room” is too grand a designation for the little house, but I rather like it. The washer and dryer would be over against the wall, just opposite the new door. The stove would find a new home in the kitchen, which would soon be gutted of everything that made it even resemble a room in a habitable house. The walls would be chipped away from the old lumber, exposing the siding nailed to the outside of the house. There would be no insulation, nothing to fill the empty walls. This partly explains why it is so cold in the winter time, even with the heat turned up.

Del and I drove to the Colosso-Box together, picked out a door that we agreed would look nice out back, and also selected some lumber for my stairs leading to the new deck. I’d been hesitant about starting the stairs, as this was a fairly precise operation for me, and as a result meant that it would take me an inordinately long time to accomplish. So I just let it be. Del quickly evaluated the situation, took into account where I wanted the steps to begin down at ground level—with easy access to the new patio, and made some marks on the deck to establish where the new lumber would be attached. This took him no more than five minutes. He wielded his tape measure as though it were a part of him, and not in the hesitant, fearful way that I often use it—as though the thing might suddenly rear up and bite me. Seeing him work through the measurements, assuring me all the while that the stairs posed “no problem whatsoever,” filled me with relief. I wanted to hug Del, thank him while great sobs of joy gushed from my thin chest, but we really don’t have that kind of relationship—and, even if we did—Del would not be appreciative of this emotional outburst. I did add this, however: I told him that the small cat, who enjoyed going up to sit on the deck to take in the view, had to gain access by climbing up one of the tall posts, raccoon-like, until she was able to hoist herself onto the deck itself.
“She’ll sure like those stairs,” I said to Del, who looked at me as if I were insane.

I’d readied the little room with plastic sheeting and other things to help catch the dust and debris from the day’s work. Del set to chipping away the wall at around nine in the morning, while I busied myself with other things relating somewhat peripherally to making progress on the home improvement front. By 2:30, he’d removed the interior wall, cut a precise opening for the new door and frame, and had the whole business installed—looking like it had been there forever. I now have a new steel door with modern locks and shiny keys that go with them. I’ve never had it so good.

The old back door will go the way of most of the kitchen—into the trash. Encrusted with decades of paint with a healthy dose of lead, the thing is useless—a terrible and wasted relic from the past that is too much trouble to salvage. It is quite likely original to the house, but difficult to say. Someone with a background in the architecture of these old homes might be able to give an opinion. For me, it looks as old as the place—which was built in the nineteen-twenties, at a time when “electrified street lighting” was boasted as a selling point for the neighborhood.

The old pine boards, made from trees that were very likely quite old at the time the house was built, were still useable, however. These made up the siding in the area where the new doorway was cut. Now I had uniform three-foot sections waiting to be discarded. Since these were plain wood, unpainted, I thought it would be good to reuse them if possible. I placed an advertisement for them as giveaways on the online forum, and have had substantial interest in them. With the many people who suddenly want this wood, it is likely that someone will actually come by to pick up the old boards.

As a souvenir, I kept the handle to the old storm door—that ineffective and mostly creaky outer door that served as an ill-fitting barrier against the weather. I simply cut the section of storm door around the handle, preserved part of the door and the handle together—as they would have been paired over the decades of opening and closing the back door. The one who would have made the most use of this handle—Alvina Beaver—would most likely not have thought to preserve it, would not be interested in anything attesting to her time spent alone for a half-century in the old house—her husband Richard long departed. When she used the handle, with a watering can or a sack of tulip bulbs in the spring, there was only an awful back porch—a small landing with the remains of a box where the milkman once left his deliveries in the morning. The stairs were slanted and made for an uneasy descent—on account of their irregular and downturned treads. For a railing, there was a piece of galvanized pipe attached to the house at one end, and screwed into the steps at the other. The whole thing was reminiscent of the crazy shoe-house that I remember from my childhood stories, where a woman with many, many children lived in a shoe and—as the story has it—“didn’t know what to do.” An illustration accompanied the poem, and the house was lopsided, with everything at crazy angles. I remember looking at the picture, the sober-minded and overly-serious youth that I was, and saying: “How could anyone live in a place like that!” And: “The kids! She has way too many kids!”

Alvina Beaver is gone now, but the handle she grasped, had to touch—through winters and springs and times of bad news and glad times and everything in between—the appearance of the Easter lilies and the terrible crashings of summer storms that put out the lights in an elderly woman’s home, all alone with only the thrashing of furious branches in a relentless wind without—all of that is over and done with. For my part, I have no remembrance of her other than the house she left behind—and this knob that creaked open the back door ever more slowly with each passing year.