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This Saturday morning, I received a voice mail from my mother. The message said, "Hey! Happy first day of Trout season! Guess how I knew."
I didn't have to guess. Among the many quirks of living on Moffett Drive in rural Darlington, Pennsylvania, is the infallible built-in calendar of Trout season. I was a sophomore in high school the first year mom and I discovered this. I had just walked into my room and closed the door after a quick shower. I turned to face my window, and I shrieked at the sudden appearance of the backs of several, balding, middle aged heads, making their way up the dyke which separated our back yard from a small river.
Ah, Trout season.
Mom shared a similar experience that morning. For you to understand just how bizarre it might have been to see unfamiliar faces in our yard, it's important to give a little background on 106 Moffett Dr.
We moved to Moffett Drive after having spent most of our lives in the city of Pittsburgh, with a brief stint on a farm during the interim. Darlington, Pennsylvania is situated between Chippewa and New Galilee—all the locals insist this is pronounced "New Gal-ee," despite its biblical significance. There is not much in Darlington except Jack's Independent Service station, and One-Stop-Shopper—aptly named, as you can find anything from chipped ham and Wonderbread, to a new timing belt for your Buick. When driving from One-Stop-Shopper to Moffett Drive, you'll see the porch people. It's a rare occasion, indeed, that you'll pass by this house and not be greeted by their affectionate waves and charming front yard décor, including a fully functional bathroom toilet and a pilfered 6 x 6 sign declaring in tawdry blue print—"Welcome to Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse."
Moffett Drive itself is nestled between Darlington Lake and the Beaver River. Venturing down a steep driveway, you will come upon its four, lone houses, surrounded by brush and a high river bank. By virtue of its geography, the area often floods in the spring, bringing untold joy to "Peanut," a neighbor's granddaughter, who swims cheerfully in the "pool" that has just been created in the sunken part of her yard. The neighbors, Butch and Bobby, own a collection of various automobiles with permanent residence in their yard, each of which Butch is "working on," none of which actually run. We might have complained about the eyesore, but we've learned to pick our battles. Butch once cut down a beautiful flowering dogwood tree to replace it with the back of a bread truck, which he had cut in half, to create a shelter for his motorcycle.
Despite his uncanny resemblance to a bearded Charles Manson, Butch is mostly harmless. Bobby, his wife, is really the more personable of the two. Butch took a swing at her once, and she proceeded to carry a revolver in the back of her cut-off jean shorts for five years subsequent, just to underscore the sincerity with which she hoped he not do that again. The pair have several sons, all named "Charles." To cut down on the obvious confusion, they go by Charles, Chuck, Chicken-wing and Char-girl. Chuck and his wife finally moved out of Butch and Bobby's a few years ago, Charles is currently incarcerated for attacking someone with a chainsaw, Char-girl is in and out on various drug charges, and I'm pleased to know nothing of Chicken-wing. When we first moved to Darlington, it was clear that Butch and Bobby were the good neighbors.
Before we purchased the house at 106 Moffett, we rented the house at 104 Moffett—situated directly between Butch and Bobby's and our current home. 104 was owned by a young man named Sam who, until we moved in, had used his house as a 24 hour shelter for partying and illegal drug use. 104 was commonly know in the area as "The Mad House," it's insides covered solid with various, drug-inspired grafitti. Sam gutted and remodeled the place before attempting to rent it out. This endeavor was mostly successful, but for a few places where someone failed to use primer before painting. My bedroom, at first glance, seemed completely normal, even quaint, and free of substance abuse—except for the one small section of wall hidden behind my door when it stood open. Here, where the thick, black, magic marker had bled though the new paint, read the cryptic message: there's something bout the feel of the ice, and the weight of the potato salad, that lends itself to healing of, gonna gonna, gimme gimme your moutha. To this day I'm curious as to what this might have meant.
It was during our year long stay at The Mad House that we first became acquainted with the neighbors opposite Butch and Bobby. I remember pulling into the driveway that morning, a truck full of furniture and miscellaneous household items behind us. The setting itself was nothing short of idyllic. Pampas grass bristling with rabbits and groundhogs, trees with flowers planted in their hollow knots, the crooning of the bordering river. It was not an altogether unappealing place to live. This bucolic scene, however, was soon to become a point of stark juxtaposition.
We exited the car, and began the tedious process of unloading the first truck load of our house. In a gruff and caustic voice, neighbor called to us. "Ya'll need any help?" The inquiry had come from a beast of a man who, in my memory, most closely resembles "Haggrid" from the Harry Potter movies. Standing six foot five, easily 300 pounds, this immensity of a man stood facing us in a shirt laden with holes and soot, his face barely visible behind a mass of sinuous, auburn beard. I tried to suspend my immediate judgment, as he had, in fact, asked us if we needed any help. My mother, torn with much the same apprehension as myself, I am certain, muttered out a dubious, "ahhh… sure!" The beast-man nodded his head, turned to his wife, and called to her, "Lila! Go help them unload!" This slight of a woman, gaunt in a way that made her appear like a skeleton in flesh-colored under armor, made her way over to our truck obediently. If we were appalled, we did not dare show it.
Hoss, as we soon learned, was too large to fit into regular folding chairs. For this reason, the lawn was freckled with various living room furniture. A reclining chair here, a loveseat there, an end table with a missing leg. Hoss had three brothers, Paunch, Hippie, and Stinky. Little Ronnie was a nephew who also made his home at 106 Moffett. If I had seen deliverance at the tender age of 13, I would have promptly purchased a bow and arrow upon encountering this disparate crew.
To say we lived in fear of these people would be grossly inadequate.
After a month or so of careful observation, mom devised an ingenious plan. I arrived home from school to come upon my mother cooking roughly 20 chicken patties in the oven. I loved chicken patties as much as the next child, but this seemed, in a word, superfluous. I observed, nonplussed, as she took the patties out, put them on buns and arranged them on a platter, complete with aesthetically placed condiments. This she handed to me, pointed me to the door, and with a pat on the head commanded, "feed the neighbors."
Genius.
Things were much less tense after that. I began to hang out with Lila's daughter. I kept my distance from the men, but I kept an ear to them as well. They were a curious amalgam of contradictory principles. Each night they burned a tire in the front yard, Jack Daniels in hand, proceeding to and from the house for the intermittent use of crack cocaine. The tires were infinite, as they collected these for money, and dumped them there on their own property, accumulating a mound nearly ten feet high. They recounted tales of general deviant mischief, of outsmarting the authorities, darker stories of murder—stories I hope to this day were just a false display of raffish testosterone, meant to impress one another. But at the same time, Hoss knew the very day that report cards were meant to arrive home with the students—a trait I came to resent, for his obnoxious habit of sharing this information with my mother. He would ask Jaime for it promptly when she arrived home that day. He or Lila checked her assignments consistently to be sure she was keeping up with her work. She was not allowed to participate in the evening's carousing. Discipline was strict in the household. I was positively confounded by the lot of them. What I did not understand, I simply came to accept: working hard in school and smoking crack were two things our neighbors believed ought be taken very seriously.
It was a little over a year into our residence in The Mad House when Hoss came to my mother with a proposition. "Listen Mary," he began, "This is the first time in 17 years that me and my brothers are all legal to be driving in 45 of the 50 states. I'll sell you my house for $5,000 cash, plus back taxes." Our house had recently sold in Pittsburgh, and mom jumped at the chance to own a home so cheaply. We bought it. After further review, I'm not convinced it was such a bargain, though having the neighbors gone added thousands to the property value, I'm certain.
The bathroom had to be gutted. We had well water in Darlington, and the land was high in Iron content. The water left rust stains behind almost everywhere it dripped. It was necessary to clean the bathroom constantly in order to prevent the solid, orange buildup. Since the neighbors had come to own the house, it had not once been cleaned. The rust could be chipped off with a chisel. It was gutted and redone. Providentially so, I might add, as we discovered a few other anomalies in the process. The bathtub drained directly onto the ground underneath the floor. Also with regard to plumbing, the toilet was connected to a downspout. (A downspout is a rain gutter. That thing attached to your roof that helps water run off to the sides. Not an excellent choice for confining poo.)
Stinky had built an addition onto the house, which was to be split in half to make mine and my mother's bedrooms. There was a ladder nailed to the addition. We didn't understand this until the first heavy snowfall, when the roof had to be shoveled so it wouldn't cave in. We removed the barn door that had been separating the addition from the living room, and replaced it with a normal door. My mom asked the contractor to add a footer around the addition, and to check to see if it was insulated. This is my recollection of their conversation:
Contractor: Well, Mary, I have good news and bad news.
Mom: Okay, give me the good news.
Contractor: It's insulated.
Mom: Okay, what's the bad news then?
Contractor: It's insulted with old, dirty clothes.
Mom: I see.
I refused to move in. I'm not sure how long I held out for. I remember having been quite adamant, though. The water smelled like eggs. That's rough for a thirteen-year-old. To return back to the central point, all of this to say, 106 Moffett Drive was not a house that anybody would have voluntarily spent a lot of time in or around—which is what made the appearance of the Trout fishermen so alarming. Funnier still, is that we would consistently forget to mark this momentous occasion on our calendars, thus perpetuating our annual A.M. ambush. It was a delightful voicemail to receive this Saturday morning, pregnant with nostalgia.
This is not a blog in which I'll eventually come around to some object lesson, so I apologize if you've come this far, waiting for it. I just wanted to share this unusual history while I can still remember it.
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Posted by kaileyH on 2008-07-09 20:47:45 | Rating: | Views: 49
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not having a point or getting to it
is what I do best
so I did not mind taking this little ride down memory lane with you at all
but this story was pretty off the wall
or should I say in the wall?
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Posted by roe
on 2008-07-23 02:09:14
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although
this story sounded very fishy
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Posted by roe
on 2008-07-23 02:10:45
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