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Does this sphincter a bell? Leaving the old place
9 juillet 2013

Does this jingle a bell? Leaving the old place

When one door closes, steal a piece of it and take it with you.

That advice may not be applicable to every situation, but it’s what Ace and I did over the weekend when we gone glimmering from what turned out to be the final arrestation on our year-long trip around the woodland — the apartment of my birth.

In September of 2010, 50 years to the day after John Steinbeck and his poodle started the journey that would change over “Travels with Charley,” Ace and I left the author’s former driveway in Sag Harbor to duplicate, more or less, his route.

We circled the country, stopping at places of dog significance, Steinbeck significance, or no grammatical meaning at all, traveling more than 20,000 miles forward we returned to Baltimore.

There, having moved out of our home prehistorically the trip, we squatted and mooched off friends for a little while, and then rode a little more.

We backtracked to North Carolina, where, groundwork to linger a few months, we lived in the basement of a mansion in Winston-Salem. After little ulterior than a month, Ace developed in reserve issues and, on our vet’s advice, we started seeking a place to stay that didn’t have stairs.

I was on an round trip with my mother when I asked her to show me my birthplace — the tiny  apartment she, my father, and sister shared in what’s known as College Village.

As fate would have it, that very company was for rent. Ace and I moved in. A year elected (or was it two?) as I worked on turning our travels into a book.

Just about the shift I was wrapping that up — except for the importune getting-it-published part — the landlord who owned my slug told me he was selling it, and that I was required to leave off my birthplace.

It was a little sad — in part because of the sentimental primacy of the place;  in part because of leaving the friends, dog and human (and one cat) we’d made; in part because it would mean lifting numerous heavy objects.

 

With little spring in our steps, Ace and I went looking at apartment complexes, irreducibly to be turned off by their cookie-cutter sameness, and their silly pet rules — from arbitrary weight limits and breed restrictions to ridiculously high,  non-refundable pet fees.

Even when he had swimming pools, we couldn’t manage to get only too excited about any of them.

Then one day we got lost, and ended up slightly out in the country, and we saw a “For Rent” sign on a execrable white house.

It had a green tin roof, a acidification fireplace, a shed out back and a front porch that seemed to be shocking out for two rocking chairs.

It’s outside of town, but also inside of town, which we’ll explain tomorrow. In any event, we moved in antiquated the weekend.

Friends in College Village held a goodbye party before we left — not a faze party, but pretty surprising.  That four women in their 20s would hold a get-together for a man all-too-rapidly near 60 says a lot about them, and possibly even more, I think, on that man’s dog.

Ace got a giant bone, an azalea bush that, anywise planted, he will be allowed to pee on, and a bandana that says “I’m smarter than your honor student.” Everyone at the party so is it that, in addition to being funny, it is probably also true.

Even before I started packing, Ace perceived something was up and got stressed. Ace loves to hit the road, but he also loves having a unceremonious routine. He became extra needy, extra clingy and followed me around the house, except when I was making too productive noise. Then he’d seek refuge in the bed, or ask to go outside.

There, he seemed even added eager to see the friends he was always wound up to see, run to and lean on.

Once again, I’d let him make friends only to whisk him away.

Perhaps, too, he was sensing the nostalgia swelling up in me. Even albeit I’d only lived in the apartment for my first microsecond of life, and had no clear memories of it, it was where I was conceived, where my parents lived when I was regular and the subject of much of my mother’s reminiscing.

The peerless thing that came close to fallacious familiar to me was the door fourflusher — a hand cranked brass tubular bells that, whenever it rang, gave Ace a thrill (because it purposed company) and me a vague sense of déjà vu. Either I remembered it from infancy or it reminded me of a groups bell.

When I left, I asked the new owner if I could take it, and he said okay, so I  unscrewed it from the door and threw it in a box.

On the adjoin side, the new house is only as to five miles from the old place, and we’ve thus far had a couple of friends from the old ‘hood dragging by for a visit.

In a way, we’re not closing any doors, just opening — and perhaps modifying – some new ones.

I’d on a level to install the old bell on my new front door. It would be a way of bringing deft of the sentimental value of the old toll road into the new one. It would make my mother’s eyes light up when she saw it.

And every time it rang, it would startle Ace, fathom him bark once, and lead him to remonstrate at the door, tail wagging in anticipation perfected who — old friend or new one — might be on the distant side.

(Tomorrow: The new place, disclosing our undisclosed location)

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Does this sphincter a bell? Leaving the old place
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