7761. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 151)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 151)

Along about 1960, my father was the first

person on our block, for some reason odd,

to punch out the back of the house to extend 

it outward with another, added-on room. There

were suddenly 4 kids, and another one still to

come, so I do guess the planning was that 

there'd soon be no room. The attic had already 

been done, a few extra bedrooms and others. 

I was, that year, (it was Summer) I guess, 10, 

soon to be 11. Between the usual Saturday 

bicycle jaunts over to Woodbridge, for Little 

League games, in the mornings, I was free

and I 'pitched in' as it were. My father had

decided, as much as possible, that this 

construction was to be done by him alone.

And it was, with the occasional help of am

uncle or two. This sort of self-initiative with

construction projects seemed to run in my

family. Don't know why, except maybe a

proficiency with hammer and nails, or a good

conceptual and practical idea of what was involved

with construction and everything that went with it.

My one uncle, Walter, as I've mentioned long 

earlier here, had built a Sears project house way up

on some wooded land he'd purchased in Butler.

My father, I guess, must have planned out and

diagrammed what he was doing. I remember the

initial stage  -  he and I, and I'd suppose others

too, though I don't recall, simply dug out the 

foundation line with pick-axe and shovel. The

perimeter of the entire project thus being dug, the

cinder blocks and mortar were brought in. He'd

rented one of those round things that twirl slowly 

about and keep the readied concrete-mix on the pour.

We'd put down cinderblocks and then mortar them, all

the while, with levels and string, my father kept the

needed straightness and proper alignment. It must have

been pretty mad work, all-consuming, and I guess it

took a lot of time, though  -  being a kid  -  I hardly

remember anything more than a few days of work 

(mine). I recall the little metal bars with bolt ends,

sticking up, onto which the large boards were then

secured, the wooden parts of the structure, and then 

the walls, etc. But before all that actually, the best 

memory I have is of the two of us laying down the 

large plywood pieces, leveling and securing what 

was to become the big, flat floor of the one, large 

room.  I can recall all that flat wood, like a big dance
floor, and me going off in each direction with a hammer
and nails, securing the floor-flats into place. It was great 
fun, for me, to just go around, hammering nails into 
place. The floor stretched out behind the house, awaiting 

walls and windows, etc. Over time it all got done; 

I remember the day we bashed through the rear 

kitchen wall to connect the new and the old rooms. 

There was heavy plastic hanging up for a period of time 

after the bashed wall came down and before the 

actual sealing off and closing of the new room 

into the merged part of the bigger house. That

was pretty momentous -   I recall my mother being 

away for that and us scurrying around to get it done, 

or at least sealed up together and weather-fast, as 

her big surprise upon coming home. Maybe it 

was with my little brother, Andrew, the newest 

family member, from the hospital  -  which 

would have made it, I think, March, '62. 

Not sure on that.

-

It became more and more difficult for me to see

the 'place' of Inman Avenue as a fixed abode. My

father's changing of the house was just the first of

many I saw. Things suddenly began being altered  -  

some people started getting garages, some tweaked 

their driveways and side areas. About twenty homes

immediately got swimming pools  -  a whole rash of

that began happening (those 3 or 4 feet high, 1960's

above-ground plastic pools with round, metal sides). 

Then people woud add pool-decks, or patio-type

areas. There took off, with all this, some easy idea

of informal living, a California-style brash happiness.

I don't know how it all happened. The Kennedy-era,

for what it was worth, seemed suddenly sunnier and

bolder, as if people could smile again, get over some

weird hang-up about whatever it had been that kept

people tied up internally. You'd suddenly see women 

traipsing around in their yards in bathing suits. Modest

bathing suits, don't get me wrong, but still, you're seeing

someone else's Mom in her yard in some weird, skin-tight

snorkel suit of a sort. Yikes! Suits back then had this

little oddbal hangover crotch thing that didn't highlight

so much the 'business area,' as bathings suits today don't

even try to cover. Anyway, daytime mothers (few worked 

then) would sit around all day, in one yard or the other, at

hot Summer poolsides and just schmooze, have lemomade

or something, and watch the idiot kids (like me) bouncing

around from pool to pool. It was a certain bit of craziness 

for sure. By four o'clock, usually, it was all over, and 

everyone went home  -  to make dinner for Dad, returning

home sometime around 5 or so. My own father, I recall,

used to get home by 5:30, on hot days, and just go right

into the pool, one mad splash-bomb into the water, just 

to cool off in his bathing suit. It all sounds so bizarre 

now, and even seems a bit squeamish or awkward or

'icky', just to think of all that water and warmth and 

people using one stupid tub of water. But, whatever. 
As I said, I used to think the entire block was fixed and 
finished and unchanging, but then people just seemed 
suddenly to have begun altering thier homes.

-

There was a certain level of, say, a Jackie Kennedy 

wannabe quality to some of Inman Avenue's activities.

There'd always be an outdoor radio playing in someone's 

yard  -  all those stupid Bobby Darin and such-like songs,

that almost pathetic 1960's coolness just starting. Dumb

disk-jockeys blabbing on about this or that. It was all so

surface and so facile. Purple People-Eater. Itsy-Bitsy-

Teen-Weenie Yellow-Polka-Dor Bikini junk. The 

Kennedy assassination soon enough put an end to a

lot of that, but for a few years it was really sailing.

It was only, really, a few years later that the Robert

Kennedy assassination topped out that whole mess.

I remember, about that time, there used to be a little

hot-dog place in Woodbridge, on whatever street that

is by the VFW Hall and the train station (Pearl?), and I 

was sitting in there having a hot dog lunch or whatever, 

and this Sirhan Sirhan thing came on the radio  -  the

guy they'd apprehended for killing Robert Kennedy.

A Palestinian guy with a weird double-name. How weird

and bizarre it all was, and the reaction of the others in

the place, and the fat guy behind the counter  -  he was

always in place, seemed a Neanderthal, a big-dumb

no-brainer kind of guy. The venom in the place, towards

this Sirhan guy, was palpable. Everyone could feel it but,

at that time and moment, no one had a clue as to what to

do about it  - there was such a level of fear and mistrust

everywhere, that it seemed the entire country had lost any

 and all of that sunniness of those backyard days of yore;

the just-recent yore, but yore nonetheless, when an 

innocent bunch of Moms could walk about all day

in bathing suits, and think nothing of it.