As I made the familiar right turn a half-block from my Mom and Dad's house (my house!) I noticed a lot of unaccustomed activity at the old house on the corner. Old lady Hodge's house. The road here kind of meandered to the left with my old street breaking away to the right so it wasn't a sharp 90 degree angle but rather a wide turn that you could take at 40 miles an hour on your bike if you were brave enough. That made old lady Hodge's expansive green lawn, facing both streets the way it did, the largest yard on our entire side of town.

On this particular day the lawn and the huge juniper tree hugging the corner of the house were all immaculately trimmed as usual, as were the double row of hedge shrubs lining the driveway. The old, familiar pastel green Rambler was parked in the driveway just as it had been two and a half decades before when I moved into the neighborhood at four years old. I had a lot of history with that house. I had my first real kiss under one of those hedges with Anita Vejil. She and her brothers Gilbert and Gary lived on the opposite side of old lady Hodge from me and my family. When I was twelve I fell out of the big old cottonwood tree in the back yard, breaking a half dozen thick branches on the way down while somehow escaping serious injury. Gil, Gary, and I would sneak into old lady Hodge's back yard to climb that tree because it was the best climbing tree in a ten-block radius. One year we caught a white domesticated rabbit under the big juniper, obviously an escaped pet, and I took it home and somehow convinced my Dad that we desperately needed a rabbit and that I'd take care of it, scout's honor! Once we even found a sick, disoriented bat dangling off the curb in front of the house in the middle of the day. We were smart enough to leave that one alone and call animal control to come take care of it.

I hadn't visited my parents for a few weeks so it took me a moment to realize what struck me as odd about the scene today. The old man busily vacuuming the back seat of the green Rambler wasn't particularly out of place as I recognized him as old lady Hodge's son and the one who kept her yard manicured and her Rambler in top running condition for so many years. Ah, maybe it was the stack of cardboard boxes on the front porch next to the wedged-open front door. I pulled up to the curb and rolled down the passenger-side window.

"Hey, how's it going?"

The man looked up from his labors and nodded a greeting. "Well, my mother passed about a week ago and we're cleaning out the house to put it up for sale… heh, she was a hoarder so it's gonna take a while!"

"Man, I'm sorry to hear that. Can you use a hand?"

"Sure, there's some heavier furniture my sister wont be able to help out with."

"OK, I'll park the car and be over in a few."

*****

Gilbert nudged me insistently and indicated old lady Hodge's dimly lit front porch and the bowl sitting on the glider under the big front window. It was still early on Halloween night but the sun was down and it was shaping up to be a chilly autumn. "There's a note taped on the bowl. Why'n'tcha go check it out?"

I laughed. Gil had been afraid of old lady Hodge as long as I could remember. I couldn't resist tweaking him a little. "Naw, I think you should do it!"

"No way, I heard she's a witch. She's creepy and she smells funny. And she yells at me if I take a short cut across the lawn."

"Aw, she's not a witch. She makes great hamburgers. Remember last year she handed out caramel apples?"

"What, you think she's got caramel apples in that bowl?"

"Naw, prolly not. Gary and I'll check it out, c'mon Gary!" Gary was dressed as a pirate and I was in a cumbersome cardboard robot outfit my Mom helped me make. We circled around the empty driveway (hmm, where was the Rambler? Old lady Hodge must have been out for the evening) and hopped onto the porch from the side. The bowl was filled with Three Musketeers bars and the note taped to the side written in precise, elegant cursive said "Please help yourself to one each!"

Gary whooped and grabbed the bowl, running with it across the lawn to rejoin his brother. I yelled after him "Hey, don't take 'em all!", but by the time I caught up Gary and Gil were scooping candy into their bags.

"C'mon, guys, Hodge is OK, put the candy back and let's just take one apiece… maybe two."

The two brothers exchanged glances and rolled their eyes at me. "Yeah, she's your babysitter, huh?"

"Not anymore. What of it? Just put the stuff back."

They grumbled and made rude noises but eventually they fished the candy bars back out of their bags and into the bowl. "Dunno why you don't wanta clean her out, she's just a evil ol' woman."

I ran the bowl back to the glider and we made our way up the street.

*****

When I stepped through the front door into old lady Hodge's living room I was overtaken immediately by a strong sense of deja vu, or maybe it was scent memory. The room hadn't changed a bit since old lady Hodge had babysat me and my sister so many years ago. I thought I could still smell her skillet hamburgers frying in the kitchen. The decor was familiar but simultaneously new viewed afresh through the filter of adult eyes. An older woman was puttering about putting things into a box. "You must be Mrs. Hodge's daughter", I ventured. The woman smiled and introduced herself and we chatted a while about her departed mother.

I began boxing some of the knick-knacks on the mantel and picked up a picture I had probably seen dozens of times as a child but never really looked at closely. It was an old photograph of a handsome couple in military uniform, the woman extremely beautiful and smiling broadly. "Is this your mom and dad?"

The woman smiled and took the photograph from me. "They met in Manila after the war. Mom was a WAVE stationed in the Philippines. They lived in Brussels for a while where mom performed violin in the symphony orchestra." She laughed, "they didn't get married until they returned to the states in the fifties, a real scandal!"

I shook my head with no little regret, feeling acutely the opportunity I had missed not getting to know her better.

*****

After we'd exhausted all the houses up the block from Gil and Gary's house, we turned around and headed back down the street. I looked for the bowl as we passed but it was gone, the note lying on the porch next to the glider.

Gil made a raspberry noise as we strolled by. "Witch. She's older'n dirt. Hope she dies soon."

Fantastic story so far. I hope you have more to tell.

I coulda figured you for the goody two shoes.

Thanks for sharing this great story

This brought back the memories of my own childhood and reminded me that things do eventually change for all of us.

SG

I lost the opportunity to know her better...

I advocated taking two candy bars instead of one, didn't I? Bad seed all around.

I often wonder how differently things would be around here if we knew more about each others' story. It's too easy to be hostile and dismissive of folks we only see through the fray's filter. Unfortunately, things have devolved so severely that it's foolish to put much of ourselves out there.

I tried several times to post this last night only to have the server throwing errors for just about everything I tried to do. When I finally got it to post I found the parser had stripped all my formatting, jamming everything into one monolithic unformatted paragraph. Then more errors while I tried to delete and repost. I finally had to enter all my formatting directly as HTML codes, including my own paragraph breaks. I'm still having to do all that if I don't want a single blob of undifferentiated text. And now I see that the formatting changes depending on whether you view the post in threaded or flat view.

Yeesh.

Who's supposed to be checking the oil level here?

(Oh, and thank god the old fray taught me to copy my text into the clipboard before hitting "Post"!)

Age and ageing. It's to be expected I suppose that children have difficulty---or no interest in---imagining the Older Folks they're acquainted with having once had youth and vigor and dreams and interesting life stories to tell, just like anyone else. What's odd is how persistent those First Impressions are long after the children age themselves.

It's pretty sad when certain posters use every bit of personal information against other posters and their families. Who would ever think that talking about ones' health issues would ever be used to attack someone but as we've seen that has happened.

I agree with you, we have to be careful of what we say on public forums because sadly some of societies underbelly lurks here.

Still, I'm glad you did share a part of your life for it was great reading and I would have hated to miss it.

SG

Oh man did this jog some memories.

I know that shade of Rambler green. We used to build model cars, my brothers and me, back when kids did that sort of thing. The Testors paint rack was right at the end of the aisle lined on both sides with 1:20 scale 1950s-60s cars. We always thought that Ramblers were old people cars, so we never built one, but we did grab some of that green. Now, I wish I could buy a Rambler. It's kitschy Skitch.

Caramel apples, honor system. Jesus. Remember that?

Don't know about you Skytch, but we had very few trick or treaters this year. Maybe it's the flu thing.

Hey wait a second....Skitch?

Skitch?

THAT Skitch?

Well, well, well. I've been waiting for this opportunity for weeks.

I wanted to respond to Skitch earlier, but I was so busy, I simply did not have the time. Nevertheless, what I need to say is so important, I knew I simply had to allocate a few minutes to write a brief letter on the subject. Before I start, however, I should state that to understand what Skitch's particularly maladroit form of ageism has encompassed as a movement and as a system of rule, we have to look at its historical context and development as a form of incomprehensible politics that first arose in early twentieth-century Europe in response to rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. It is deeply unfortunate that I am burning to know what classes of morally crippled, twisted reasons exist in the heads of those who undermine everyone's capacity to see, or change, the world as a whole, because if we are to treat the blows of circumstance, then we must be guided by a healthy and progressive ideology, not by the scary and worthless ideologies that Skitch promotes. Not surprisingly, I have a problem with his use of the phrase, "We all know that...". With this phrase, Skitch doesn't need to prove his claim that honesty and responsibility have no cash value and are therefore worthless; he merely accepts it as fact. To put it another way, he claims that no one is smart enough to see through his transparent lies. That claim is preposterous and, to use Skitch's own language, overtly smarmy. No history can justify it.

Also let me say that Skitch's secret passion is to deny both our individual and collective responsibility to live in harmony with each other and the world. For shame! Sure, some of Skitch's pronouncements are valid but that's not the point. Relative to just a few years ago, prodigal, gormless deviants are nearly ten times as likely to believe that unfounded attacks on character, loads of hyperbole, and fallacious information are the best way to make a point. This is neither a coincidence nor simply a sign of the times. Rather, it reflects a sophisticated, psychological warfare program designed by Skitch to empty garbage pails full of the vilest slanders and defamations on the clean garments of honorable people.

Skitch's views remain opaque to many observers who dismiss Skitch on the basis of his audacious screeds and general lunacy. It is no more complicated than that. To oppose elitism, we must oppose recidivism. To oppose clericalism, we must oppose militarism. And to oppose Skitch, we must oppose misguided vermin. Whenever a will-o'-the-wisp of statism, however unreal, turns up anywhere, he is off at a trot. In fact, I have said that to Skitch on many occasions, and I will keep on saying it until he stops trying to provide the pretext for police-state measures. I do not appreciate being labeled. No one does. Nevertheless, his vassals were recently seen challenging all I stand for. That's not a one-time accident or oversight. That's Skitch's policy. Skitch and others of his ilk are symbols of sordid narcissism. So I give you this letter. I hope it helps.

I had one page view that didn't work

You flatterer. I won't take up with you behind Arch's back, though, no matter how much you sweet talk me! Both my grandfathers died before I had enough maturity to understand the value of their personal history, so what I have of their stories is second-hand snippets from my Mom and Dad. But both grandmothers survived well into my adulthood so I pestered them mercilessly to write down their life stories. I have a good record from both, a valued treasure that my own kids are now both starting to recognize. Soon I expect them to start pestering me to write my own memoirs...

Turns out Ramblers are old people cars.

Funny, but I've told this story elsewhere and that Rambler green seems to resonate with everybody. Must tap into some species archetype or something...

As for your opportunistic screed... has anybody ever told you you're a bit hypergraphic?

wo.

Not that all too many can even produce a hint of a whiff of that fragrance, which you did for me with those childhood descriptions. All you need to do, Skitch (Scoutch?), is fold in an unforgettable heroic protagonist (Atticus Skitch?) with an unexpected golem assistant (Roo Badley?) doing their thing against villainy and injustice his thing over the course of a crackerjack plot of tremendous socio-political significance....and you'll smell much more like Ms. Lee.