THE HOUSE ON ELM STREET

     Pat and I stood outside the house on Elm Street. Like the rest of the block it was ramshackle, dilapidated and kind of looked like it would fall down. I didn't want to go inside. I certainly didn't want to live there for the next 3 weeks while I was being trained as a VISTA Volunteer.

     In early 1972 my draft board invited me to be drafted into the army. I refused, telling them I was a conscientious objector who would not fight or serve in Vietnam. To my surprise they agreed and said I should do 2 years of community work in the national interest. Great! I joined VISTA (think domestic peace corps) and was sent to Newport, Kentucky, a town of about 30,000 people on the Ohio River, right across from Cincinnati.

     I was excited about Kentucky...looked forward to seeing blue grass...but there was none in Newport, just broken glass filled streets with bars just about everywhere. And I didn't want to go into the Elm Street house.

     But Pat knocked on the door and we entered. There, in the middle of the room,  stood a witch! A slightly stooped old woman with a badly wrinkled face and long stringy white hair, holding a broom while a toddler held fast to her leg.

     "I'm not ready for the boy now, Pat," said Mrs. Clarke. "The house isn't ready. Come back later."

     "Yeah, let's get out of here," I thought. But instead Pat responded, "Oh, Mrs. Clarke, it's fine. Mike will love it here." Before I could answer that I wouldn't, Pat had left and abandoned me.

     I looked around. The wall paper and the paint were peeling in many spots. There were bugs. The staircase had many broken steps and some that were at strange angles. There was a man sleeping on a couch in the Front Room that I later learned was Mrs. Clarke's paralyzed oldest son and was always sleeping there. I had to go to the bathroom several times and soon found out that the sink was ajar and at such an angle that water wouldn't drain and the toilet could only be flushed every half an hour or so. The water pressure was so bad that a shower seemed impossible and a bath extremely unlikely.

     Sam Oder was Mrs. Clarke's nephew who I would be sharing a bedroom with. He was 17, hyper in his talk and laughter and, after a few minutes, decided to show me the scars on his arms from several knife fights. I'd never lived anywhere but home and in my college dorm. I'd never met anyone like this. I was scared!

     Ken, the middle son and father of the toddler, came in. He told Sam that I didn't want to see such things and couldn't he see that I was a nice guy and a gentleman. I wasn't sure if he was teasing me. But he wasn't. He was protecting me. Then I met the youngest son, Peachie, who had the bedroom next to ours. Ken said he was the first of the Clarke family to go to college and everyone was proud of him.

     That night I went to a party to welcome the new VISTAS. I was having trouble with all the new things and new people I was seeing and meeting. I walked up to Peachie on 3 separate occasions and introduced myself. He thought it was funny.

     It had been warm that night though it was February, but the temperature plummeted the next. Which was unfortunate because there was no glass in our bedroom window. The wind howled and I froze. I put on my clothes, my heaviest jacket, got under the covers, but it hardly helped. I thought the South was supposed to be warm?

     I went out a few evenings later and didn't come back to Elm Street till the next morning. I didn't call, of course, because why should I? Ken told me that certainly I could do whatever I wanted but his mom had worried about me so could I please just let them know the next time I didn't come home? I agreed. I felt bad. This was sort of homey.

     Mrs. Clarke was very sweet, kind of insecure and a good cook. I enjoyed my meals there as I became more and more comfortable. She told me that she had housed many VISTAS in training before me and I was the first one that didn't make her feel bad about the state of her home. Moving.

     When training ended I found an apartment on Boone Street but it wouldn't be ready for 2 more weeks. So I asked Mrs. Clarke if I could stay. Of course she said yes. I'd learned how to negotiate the bathroom, stopped noticing the bugs, didn't care at all about the peeling paint and wall paper and regarded the askew steps as kind of a game. Only thing I couldn't do there was shower!

     After leaving I knew I should do something nice for the Clarke's. They were baseball fans so, in the spring, I got tickets for a Cincinnati Reds game...naturally, against the Mets. As the only Mets fan in Riverfront Stadium I cheered extra loud and was rewarded with a Tom Seaver pitched close victory.

     The next day Peachie called. His mom was furious with me. "How could that boy cheer so loud against our team," she had asked. She didn't talk to me again for several days but when she did she invited me over the following Saturday. The Mets game was on NBC and I had no television.

     On game day, Mrs. Clarke said she had baked a strawberry pie. Would I like a slice? Well, I don't like strawberry pie, but given that I was still on probation from the ballgame and Mrs. Clarke was quite sensitive, I said yes and quickly ate it. Too quickly, perhaps, as she offered me another slice. Still feeling I shouldn't say no I had the second piece but ate it more slowly. When I finished she asked if I'd like a third. I felt that it would be okay to say no but turns out I was wrong.

     "Oh, I guess you didn't like the pie, " said my host. Naturally I relented and had the final slice!

     As a VISTA I did a few things. I set up a basketball league, a crafts and recreation program for kids in public housing and a program for those who hadn't finished high school to train to get their equivalency diploma. Mrs. Clarke was very smart but hadn't been able to get her degree. So she got into my program and got her high school degree at age 65. She was pretty proud.

     A year after I left Kentucky, the Mets battled the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Chanpionship series. The Mets won. I called Mrs. Clarke.

     "Oh I was just talking about you to Ken," she told me. "I said if his Mets win, no matter what, we'd be hearing from him!"

     I was sure lucky that I stayed in that house on Elm Street.

MY SOON TO BE NEW HOUSE

     As soon as I have enough "likes" on my recent facebook post, I will become the owner of my nephew Adam (and family)'s old house, the one they are leaving for a recently purchased larger one for their growing household. The post explains all about our tradition of giving me the things that Adam grows out of, so it's pretty certain to happen.

     Sadly, however, the outgrown house is in New Jersey so, of course, I could never actually live there. And by "there" I mean not in New York City. And by "not in New York City" I mean Manhattan. I'm a New Yorker. I can't imagine, wouldn't want to imagine, living anywhere else. So my upcoming house in New Jersey, WAY at the other end of the George Washington Bridge, will never, actually, be my residence.

     Having so quickly gained (almost certainly) my new home and then having to, just as fast, come to terms with its unsuitability has put me, naturally, in a reflective mood. It has me reflecting on the first home I did live in. Much smaller and far more crowded than Adam's, but, happily on the correct side of the GW in the most wonderful neighborhood EVER in the world.

     I grew up on the Lower East Side in apartment 6E in 504 East 5th Street on the corner of Avenue A. Three rooms for the 5 of us. My parents slept on a sofa that opened up in the living room. My sisters Lysie and Diane (Annie wasn't invented yet) and I shared the bedroom. Not that we were that competitive or anything but I took pride in the fact that, night after night, both my sisters fell asleep before I did...I could see that they had dozed off and I hadn't!!

     I also took pride in the fact that we lived on the 6th floor and the surrounding buildings that we could see from our living room window only had 4. I remember looking at them with my dad one stormy Winter night as he pointed out that we could see the snow on their roofs but they couldn't see it on ours. WE were in the bigger, more superior, structure!

     The apartment never seemed cramped to me; I thought it was normal to live in such close proximity. I think that did foster competition...especially true when we had just 1 television set. In the afternoon after school Lysie always wanted to watch Roy Rogers while I wanted Popeye The Sailor. We were supposed to share but I'm pretty sure she got to watch what she wanted most of the time. Though no doubt my show was much better. We made up all sorts of versions of baseball, football and hockey and only caused serious damage to the house once when I threw a rolled up pair of sweat socks through the glass of the bedroom window. But that was after we'd moved to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn (oh my gosh, we moved to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn? From the Lower East Side? WHY??) so it really doesn't belong in this tale. Still, it does give an idea of the intensity with which we played.

     Lysie is a little younger than me but was always a little taller than me, pretty strong and a very good athlete so that's probably why I've always thought it crazy (and dangerous!) to minimize what a girl or woman could do. I can't really say who won the majority of our household sporting events, though there is one thing I can say for sure...it wasn't Diane, the youngest in our family till Annie came along and made her a dreaded middle.

     But my point is that Diane kind of suffered in our limited space. One game we liked, football, involved gently tossing a football to Diane at one end of our narrow bedroom. She was required to run to the dresser, but, sadly for her, both Lysie and I stood in front of the dresser, waiting to stop her. Without many options she generally plowed straight forward till one or, more likely, both of us made the tackle. In fairness, she had 4 chances to make it to the dresser and only had to succeed once.

     She pretty much never did.

     We also played hide and seek. With, again, few places in which to hide, our father, being creative, hoisted Di up and lay her on top of the open bedroom door, her midsection resting on top with her legs and lower body dangled on 1 side and her head and upper torso on the other. What an irresponsible thing for our dad to do! I mean, it was SO easy to spot her up there!

     We also had linoleum on the floor in the foyer and hallway. I loved it...it was such a great surface to slide on, particularly when wearing your socks. Perfect for hockey games. The bedroom and living room both had wooden floors...great for rolling coins on...I used them to make up a terrific football game. This is where I learned that rugs and carpets are NO GOOD. Create way too much friction. Floors that you can roll and slide on...WAY more fun!!

     You may think there was little or no privacy in my first home. Well, first of all, I learned that privacy was not the natural order of things so it wasn't that important. And when I did want privacy I could find it...in the kitchen, at night, after dinner. I'd go in there, close the door, sometimes even turn out the light and...turn on the radio to listen to the Ranger hockey game or the Knicks basketball game. Baseball, of course, was always second nature to me. I can't remember a time when I didn't watch, play and love baseball. But basketball and hockey was more an acquired taste. And I acquired it listening to those Knick and Ranger games on the kitchen radio, at once by myself while with my good friend the announcer talking to me and thousands of loud, noisy fans as well.

     And in those wonderful broadcasts in the mid and late '50s and early '60s I learned something very important:

     My teams SUCKED! There were hardly any teams in the NBA (8) and NHL (6) at that time, the majority, therefore, made the playoffs, and my teams almost never did! They certainly didn't win any championships. I had learned to root for losers! I had learned how to have my heart broken, season after season, and still root for and care about those damn miserable teams!

     Maybe I should never have gone into that kitchen. But I still remember it as my own private world filled with stuff that I loved.

     And that's pretty much how I remember Apartment 6E...filled with all sorts of things and people that I loved!!