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We’re still in our first house, mostly because this is where all the memories are. That maple tree in the center of the backyard, the one that towers over the second-floor roof? I had that tree in the backseat of a Chevy Impala on the day that Meghan was born. A child is born; you plant a tree. That’s hope. You plant a tree and imagine that someday you’ll hang a swing from a branch and you’ll push a giggling grandchild, and that’s how you see your kids through their lives. You hug them and teach them and you hope. The memories and the hope dance in the air around here, and that’s why we stayed.
Then one day I got up early and was standing on the front lawn, just looking at the world and listening to the birds when Bill, the guy next door, came by with Baby on a leather harness. Baby was an old dog, built low to the ground and about the size and shape of a toaster oven. Bill had bought the first house in the neighborhood back in 1950 and he saw himself as the Mayor of the Block. He had something to say to everyone who passed by, and no one in our neighborhood knew what the heck they were doing, no matter what the project was. I know this because Bill would tell me so just about every day.
So I’m standing there on the lawn, back in that first summer, and I’m considering the sorry state of the petunias when Baby lifts his stump of a leg right over my flowers and lets loose with more urine than a dog this size should be capable of producing. And while this is going on right there before my new-homeowner’s eyes, Bill is cooing to this hairy bag of urine, “That’s it, Baby,” he’s saying. “Thaaaat’s it. Come on, Baby. Get it all out. That’s a good boy.”
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We moved in on a brutally hot day in July 1977. I bought some gardening tools and a push lawnmower at a garage sale and became a land baron on my 5,000 square feet. To liven up the front lawn, I planted some petunias down there at the end of the driveway, right on the corner of our little piece of the planet. I watered them and took care not to drive over them when I backed the Impala out into the street, but they didn’t thrive, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Bill wore his trousers up around his nipples and he used both a belt and suspenders. He had a world-class beer belly and a quick waddle of a walk, just like the dog’s. I liked him.| Dan Holohan - [Intro] | [Email] | [Website] |
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