This Old House

After a rather one-sided discussion with my doctor, it has been decided that, much like a man riding a donkey for a long time, I need to get off my ass and do some walking. OK. There's a lot that goes into choosing just where to walk. Doing laps around the various rooms of the house is hard on the carpet and really, really boring. Driving to the high school to do laps around the track is fun, but let's face it, when you do that you are deliberately placing yourself in the company of some exerwalkers and joggers who take themselves pretty doggone seriously. Here's where you'll see the iPods with the bicep strap, the special lightweight track shorts and thinclad tank tops, and sneakers purchased for a sum that rivals the defense expenditures of several emerging nations (my favorite: Chad!) My iPod came from the drugstore and is not really an iPod, but rather a cheap imitation that, if lost, stolen or flushed, will not cause despair. I always have another twenty bucks somewhere, or I could always get another cheap imitation iPod off eBay. My shorts and t-shirts are off Target (!) and my shoes, Rockports: The Favorite of Mall Walkers Everywhere.

By the way, last time I was at Harford Mall, I saw a sign advising of a Mall Walkers Association Meeting to be held one morning. I can just hear it now. What important business do they have to discuss? What smells better in the morning - the cinnamon buns or the coffee? Which employees of which department store tend to arrive earliest? latest? Compare and contrast.

I hear Holden's classmates hollering "Digression!" at me. On we go. I walked home from Mars tonight and I experienced something that I've noticed before, which is that you see a lot more when you're walking than you do when you're driving. When you're walking, you notice things along the side of the road that you just can't take time to examine while driving, what with being so busy changing CDs, sending text messages, adjusting the air vents and ogling the driver of that little silver job that just rolled up next to you. What, you didn't think we saw you, eyes all a-bulge like a Chuck Jones cartoon?





So, even though we've lived in this neighborhood for 21 years, I can't say that I've really seen this house before:




It is an old farmhouse-y kind of house. My gift of description just defies description sometimes. I just said that a house was house-y. Thackeray, Hemingway, Capote...move over. But it seems to be abandoned; at least, unlived-in. And the rest of the way home, I wondered about the people who lived there over the years. That house probably knew its share of joy and grief...when the new baby came home...when someone took ill...when they bought the new Chevy that time...when the Plymouth lunched its tranny that time over at the mall parking lot...when Dad got a new job and they all looked forward to it so much, what with the extra money coming in, but then it turned out to be bad because he didn't like the new duties, the hours weren't so favorable, and he would just as soon have gone back to the old job on the line...Were people conceived there? Did anyone pass away there? A house provides the stage for our lives, and I think this one would love to have people trim back the bushes it has grown in front of itself to hide its loneliness, come in and update the appliances, slap on a new coat of paint and get some living going on!

As Edgar A. Guest once said (and it's likely he repeated it over and over until his wife, a Mrs. Guest, begged him to stop), "It takes a heap o' livin' to make a house a home." Of course, he also said, "I want to be able, as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye."

Sometimes I look myself straight in the eye, generally while shaving. I like to do that little thing where I pooooch out the cheek off of which I am whittling the whiskers. Could someone please go shave in that lonely old house so it can feel like a home again?