(Image from Google Maps.)
It's so weird looking at a place that you once spent days in but haven't lived in for a very long time. I lived in this house for roughly six months in 1982. That was (doing the math in my head) thirty-eight years ago. How many people have lived in the house since then? I'm certain it was a rental. Maybe the people who live in the house own it now?
A couple of years ago I wrote a lot about my time in the house. I seem to remember being alone in the house a lot. I first shaved in that house, using my mother's boyfriend's razor, & my face hurt for a week afterwards. I remember a classmate I'd gone to school with for my entirely public school experience had a locker near mine in high school & told me some time after that, "Dickerson*, those sideburns are not working for you." The upshot of my weird shaving experiment is that with the peach fuzz gone, I suddenly sported sideburns. It would be a couple of years before I would have something that looked vaguely like facial hair on the rest of my dumb face.
There was a park down the street to the west, but I don't know if we ever went there. I remember I had to walk home from school a lot, it was about two & a half miles, & I was usually too tired to do anything after school but read comics or listen to music. I had a television in my room - probably a little black & white one - & I would try to stay up to watch David Letterman - I still have some cassettes of the show that I would tape so I could listen to them again - audio cassettes, not video cassettes - I taped Elvis Costello's appearance on the show in August 1982 for example - never knowing there would one day be a Youtube where I could watch it all over again. But unbeknownst to me things were not going well with my mother & her boyfriend & at some point at the end of the year we were whisked away to my oldest sister's house in a move that my siblings must have been familiar with but hadn't really happened to me thus far (well, when I wasn't a baby).
My mom's boyfriend was a drunk, like my dad, & I guess when my mother saw the signs she got us the hell out. She still worked at his convenience store - the Time Saver - she actually ran it when he went on his benders, which happened usually once a year - but she must have decided that even though he was her meal ticket, she didn't have to live with the guy. & the truth was, he was very unpleasant. & inappropriate. He had all the tell-tale signs of a serious pervert, & I have odd memories of him asking me questions that nowadays would trigger survivors of sexual trauma. At one meal, for example, he kept asking me if I were "well hung." I had no idea at the time what that meant. He found that very funny in a deeply creepy way.
This is something I asked my sister Pat before she died, because my little brother despised my mother's boyfriend, & he did not like to be in the house with him around. So he spent a great deal of time at her house. I asked her, did she think my mother's boyfriend did something to him? Maybe tried something? My sister emphatically said no. Even if something did happen, my little brother wouldn't admit it For my part, I didn't get any child-rape vibes from him when I was a teen but how the hell would I know what such things felt like anyway?
The house was the first time I had my own room since - well, ever. Up until then I shared a room with one or more siblings. I wouldn't get my own room again until college. Now that I think about it, I don't have my own room now. Who would've thought I'd give such a thing up for marriage? Having one's own room is the bomb!
We didn't live in that house long enough to make any impression. I know this because someone who lived on that street with whom I remember talking a few times came into the Time Saver & I recognized her, I even think I knew her name. She seemed very taken aback. This would have been just two or three years later. She had no idea who I was. I can still her saying, in that witheringly polite way some girls learn, "I'm sorry, I don't remember you." It still smarts.
P.S. A couple weeks ago I tried to remember how many "avenues" I lived on. I completely forgot about this place. So it didn't leave much of an impression of me, either, I suppose.
* Because of gym class, many of my male classmates tended to refer to me by my last name.
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