Thomas Wolfe Was Right

Nope: You can't go home again.

Not even virtually.

This is 4235 N. Marshall Street, Philadelphia, PA, via Google Streetview, dated July 2017.

This was the home of my paternal grandparents.

It was a place of parties and visits, of overnights, of Thanksgivings and Christmases.

Of springerle cookies, tall birthday cakes, personalized bags of Halloween candy and large Easter eggs with our names scripted on them in white icing.

It was where we reconnected with cousins, watched home movies from a whirring projector and sang while washing/drying dishes.

It's where Sunday dinners ended with the family gathering in front of the TV to watch Disney's The Wonderful World of Color, and where we as kids protested mightily if Dad suggested we leave before the show ended.

The concrete pad in the photo above used to be a small but lush patch of lawn that my Pop-Pop kept neat and tidy with the help of a rotary push-mower.

Those gates hide a porch that was once shaded by a set of green-striped awnings. Hanging those awnings every spring was a task that Dad was often asked to help with (apparently it was quite a struggle), but the comfort they offered from the setting summer sun made the task worthwhile.

There was also furniture on that porch, including a lounge chair that tipped upward, raising the occupant's feet for added comfort. I remember us as kids -- cousins, neighbor kids, brothers and me -- piling on that chair and screaming with laughter when it would unexpectedly tip.

I remember that house vividly.

When we would occasionally stay over and it was time to go to bed, we were told to to go "...up the wooden hill," which meant to climb the staircase to the second floor. We were also reminded to "scrub our teeth" rather than brush them.

I remember the upstairs bathroom had a skylight, which I thought was very cool.

And the basement had a separate toilet... not a full bath, but a commode that came in handy when traffic upstairs was heavy.

That basement also had a thousand treasures. Pop-pop would project home movies -- shots of people we didn't even know -- but he would hold our interest by running the films backward and cracking us up.

He also liked to use a screwdriver to short out the front doorbell. We would stifle giggles at the sound of Nana walking to the front door, only to find nobody there.

So many memories: Their silvery artificial Christmas tree. The scroll on the end of the bannister as it landed in the living room. The step-stool/seat in the kitchen. Their small garbage can on the back stoop. The fence in the backyard, with its iron humps. The twin beds that, when we kids stayed over, could be pushed together to make one large place for three brothers to sleep.

Those sleepovers often also involved a trip to the zoo, which Pop-pop loved. And a walk on Sunday morning to Mass at nearby St. Henry Parish.

My great-grandmother -- Pop-pop's mom who lived with them -- had "her" chair in the living room, from which she watched Lawrence Welk on television.

That home was the site of my first encounter with a color TV set.

And a window air conditioner. I remember escaping the summer swelter by just standing in front of its adjustable louvres.

I also remember that Dad and I would often travel there on Sundays after Mass for a visit. My brothers were other-occupied, and Mom was sleeping after a night-shift as a nurse. So Dad and I would drive in, bringing a box of donuts. We would gather at the kitchen table and just talk.

I don't recall the exact timeline of my grandparents departure from that house. I know Pop-pop died there in the early 1980s. Nana continued to live there alone, much to the concern of the rest of the family. I know she was there as late as the mid-1980s because when I studied abroad in London in Spring 1984, I sent her an Easter card that she saved. And the address is 4235 N. Marshall.

She saved that card. I have it now.

Nana understandably but regrettably sold the house at one point, driven out by a decreased ability to attend to the upkeep and an increased worry about her security.

She moved a few times after that, continuing to live on her own after her husband passed. As the years rolled on, she needed full-time nursing care and was put into a facility where her safety and health were assured. She passed away at 103.

The Marshall Street house remains. Not in its former glory, but it's still there. And I guess there's something to say for that.

And if ghosts do exist, whoever lives there, when things are quiet-quiet, may just hear singing from the kitchen.

As if someone washing and drying dishes is easing the task by humming a tune.

Mulch Ado about Nothing

This past weekend, I celebrated Mulch Day.

Mulch Day in our house is the one day a year when I roll up my sleeves and clean up the bed in front of our house.

And truth be told, as noted prior. I'm not a big fan of Mulch Day.

Maybe it's because the whole concept of mulch was foreign to me.

I came from a non-mulch home. Growing up, we never mulched anything. We mowed the lawn. We pulled crabgrass here and there. Maybe planted a bulb or two.

But nothing on the order of Mulch Day.

There really was no need. My childhood home had a similar bed out front, below the picture window that looked into the living room. But it had some kind of ground cover -- I want to say pachysandra, but I'm not sure -- that rendered mulch superfluous.

But our home now has no such eye candy. And Eileen comes from a family that was firmly devoted to mulch.

So each spring, I do a general cleanup of the bed and end it all with a coating of moist, black, shredded, smelly wood chips.

There's something from the Myth of Sissyphus about all this: I pull every weed. I spray those tiny ones that are emergent. I trim the bushes. And I lay the mulch.

And initially, it's all neat and tidy.

But generally, before July 4, the bed's a mess again. The weeds have shoved their way back into prominence; much of the mulch has disappeared (where does mulch go? Does it blow away? Is it removed by birds? Do squirrels eat it? I have 0 understanding of where $120 for 12 bags of mulch goes in a mere handful of weeks); and the bushes need a haircut once more.

It's a sweaty, muscle-aching, sunburny job.

I will say that it all looks so nice when I'm finished.

And I do enjoy that it seems to herald the firm arrival of spring.

But all things equal, if we're talking about "days" in May, this much is true:

I much prefer the leisure of Memorial Day to the work of Mulch Day.

Leap of Faith, Three Letters... Answer? Pen

I've written here in the past about my love of Scrabble (actually, two posts, both almost verbatim... my blog-memory for topics isn't as sharp as it should be).

As noted (twice), I inherited my talent with tiles and two-letter words from my Mom.

From Dad, however, I inherited a different word skill: tackling each Sunday's big-sized New York Times crossword puzzle.

This arrangement is the exact opposite of the Scrabble tradition:

Whereas Scrabble was driven by Mom and shunned by Dad, the NYT puzzle was a Dad-favorite that Mom had little patience for.

Actually, she would attempt it. But she somehow couldn't wrap her head around the themes. And the wordplay -- rather than intriguing her -- seemed to annoy her.

She also had a nasty habit of working the puzzle in pen, which was against Dad's 11th Commandment:

Thou shalt never work the NYT crossword in pen!

Side note: I actually did this -- worked a puzzle in ink -- for the first time about three weeks ago. We were on a long flight, and I had packed the puzzle in my carry-on but neglected to pack a pencil. I borrowed a pen from Eileen (airports apparently don't sell pencils), held my breath and dug in.

Actually, things turned out pretty well.

The tips I've learned in tackling crosswords all came from Dad. He taught me, for example, that if a clue is plural, so is the answer. So, for example, a clue of "Alleyway Felines" would be CATS; whereas a clue reading "Alleyway Feline" would be CAT.

And that if the clue contains an abbreviation, so does the answer.

And that the overall theme of a puzzle is usually a play on words or a series of truly groan-worthy puns.

And that there is value in putting a puzzle down for a while and coming back later. Sometimes, he would say, a fresh perspective brings a couple more answers.

... and that's a truism that applies to life itself, as well as crossword puzzles.

Dad and I would work these puzzles together throughout the week. The folded paper would rest on the kitchen table or in the living room, and when one of us felt up to the task, we'd pick it up and pore over the open spaces.

When Dad would dig in for a while and then realize he had hit a series of dead ends, he would hand the page to me and always say the same thing:

"I finished all the hard ones; you can finish the easy ones."

Yeah, right.

Although I've done other crosswords -- those in our daily newspaper, for example, or the enterainment-oriented ones that used to show up in our published television listings -- the only one that I've stuck with is NYT. A lot of the others are stupidly easy, which erases all the fun. A puzzle that can be completed accurately in 20 minutes is a puzzle that's not worth doing.

My collaborations with Dad on the NYT crossword faded over time. When I moved out and got married, sharing the puzzle became too difficult. But we would often discuss our progress when talking on the phone.

His passing in 2006 put an end to our tag-team solving.

But I'm still at it.

And every now and then, when I get stumped, I imagine him looking over my shoulder and offering a hint or two.

Or suggesting a different read on a clue.

Or pointing out an error.

Which makes it a good thing that I work in pencil.