Wow, Justin... your big life housing events
seem to fall on historic celebrity death days... Mortgage on the day Elvis died... moving into town as a kid the day Marilyn Monroe died... I worked on one of her ex-husbands plays at Manhattan Theatre Club... another UofMI graduate... there go the memories again. I'll spare you.
I've never had an orange picked from the tree nor have I picked cotton. Must have been a great time and place to grow up.
Weekdays... not much time for me to go off on Glacier Hills in its formative years. Flavor of the neighborhood remains much the same now. My parents are still there. Mumsy is 76... Father will be 79 in October. God bless your Mom at 90... bodes well for you. Both of my parents are in pretty good shape. Dad still splits wood with an axe. That's where I get my obsession with firewood and the evening blaze. He says there are two things you can never have too much of... "Money and firewood." <ggg>
I'm afraid of the axe, but I noticed the second neighbor over splitting wood with a wedge and a maul or sledgehammer. I may ask if I can try it. Not at a point where I feel like I can handle that but I would like to be able to break down some of the bigger pieces I get. I don't have time most evenings to get the fire hot enough to where the big ones catch fast enough. One of the reasons I laid the wood in now. I want it DRY by the time I burn it.
1962... you were moving into town and I was on Kwajalein... a remote tropical island in the Marshall Islands part of the Pacific Trust Territory of the United States. Testing base for the Nike Zeus then Nike X anti-missile missiles. Dad was an electrical engineer. Bell Labs had the contract for the antennas that guided the missile. When the Labs dumped its military contracts in the mid-seventies, the SAFEGUARD group was moved to the mobile phone. My dad was part of the core lead group that stayed in NJ... the rest were shipped out to Naperville IL.
Mobile phone... led to cell phones... They are a pox upon the planet IMO... I am the only member of my family who refuses to own one. I like life on the edge... hee hee.
City life to country life. I am one extreme or the other. Can't stand the middle. When I came back to NJ, I was appalled at how overgrown my home area was. If I wanted that kind of crowding, I'd have stayed in Manhattan. The New Yorker in me views most Jersey suburbanites as a joke... bad haircuts with attitude. Puh-leeze.
I never truly belonged in Manhattan. Haven't set foot in there in over 4 years and have no intention of doing it again. If I hadn't lived three blocks from Central Park (my source of green refuge), I never would have made it through 21 years. My soul belongs in these hills. I felt it the moment I saw this house on a drive-by before asking to get in. I ACHED all the way back to my apartment I wanted it so bad (badly?).
I am slowly "growing into" the physical realities. I find them exciting and challenging. If I am going live to be old, I want to be in great shape otherwise it will horrible torture for someone like me.
Running late... sorry to blather on so. Have a good one.
thinking.ksquared
AI
