Our Last Days in New Orleans Village

 The summer of summers had faded into fall. Trouble was everywhere if I wanted it to be. I was breaking the rules in so many ways as I stepped out of the shoes of a child and into a place where I felt shiny and new. 

The winter cold kept me close, and the old steam radiators tapped and banged, producing heat and a cadence, just like they did for the last 68 years. We were mobile again after being stuck for two years. I turned to the nighttime stratosphere to find my friends, and there they were, although it was clear that the times were changing, and the tide was going out.

Our house and the one before it have been a hub for many years now. It was nice to have people around us. It had been four years since we moved to this town nestled in a valley in the northwest hills. In the 1700s, it was called Mast Swamp. In the 1800s, New Orleans Village and Wolcottville. In 1887, the village was incorporated as Torrington, a name given to it back in 1732 after Great Torrington, England. In the 1970s, it was impossible not to have the robust history of this naturally quarantined town seep into your pores.

At first, we did alright, but a year and a half in, the wolves found us. They moved in, coexisting with us, making life somewhat of an amusement park ride. It was bright and fun. I thought I was old enough to understand everything that was going on, but really, I could not. Spending half a decade here implied we would always be here. Nothing else seemed possible. 

It was at an age when someone like me had to play the hand I was dealt. The people around me molded me into who I was, who I wanted to be, and who I might become. Tied to a table in the kitchen, taking in the vices of others with a healthy dose of smoke, and living on the wrong side of everything. I was still who I was, and I could say, weren't we all.

We fled in the winter to our third home in the city in the valley. It would be our last one here. It is funny how the world can be so different when you just cross the street. Now childhood was essentially ending. Morning conversations in the presence of a red aluminum percurelator and the sweet kiss of fall, new love, music, and affliction. It all came together like a congealed central explosion of textures.

As the early sun set, I knew my friend would be flying over the houses in the valley in the darkness. I spun the rope of a lasso and pulled her down into the light of my hibernation. I could tell she had aged, too, even though I had considered the whole timeline of her life; our relationship was a small moment. I didn't know this was the swan song of the things I'd taken for granted.

 I was understanding everything, or so I thought, but adulteries were burning like little fires all over the perimeter. Some I witnessed painfully, and others were hidden just beyond the lens of my youth. 

The winter had been long and hard. The spring in the final year had just begun, but something happened. We were riding high on the wave when something stationary, just below the surface, contacted us, throwing us into the cold depths. The storm troopers knocked on the door and told us it was time to evacuate. There was nowhere to go. We were falling, and there was no rescue.

As I look back on this, I have questions. The one prominent question was: What happened to the foundation of our family that allowed this? There was a relationship happening at this time, a pretty serious one, and yet, we were allowed to fall. It took me 46 years to figure this out. To say I thought I knew is ridiculous.

We stayed tight. A great woman stood up tall with the power of her blood, sweat, and tears. I wish I could tell her today how much that meant to me. So many years had to pass before I could see how incredibly strong she was, and the bravery and tenacity of what she did. I hear echoes on the wind. She was thankful that this was in her power. But I know that she always had this power because it was a flame within her heart she could never extinguish. No matter what the world was or what it could deal, she would do what she needed to do. 

It is funny how everything that starts with me or someone else in my family can be traced back to my Grandmother's incredible strength. What a human being she was. Like all of the things we lament today. The world used to be filled with giants. These were wonderful people who always put others first. When they got cuts and callouses from giving themselves fully, they were grateful to be able to do so. I have no words but only to say: Thank you. It really made a difference in our lives. Any success we see today finds its origins in the love you showed. 

Drifting

 It is like "A Little Bit of Emotion" a 1979 song from the Kinks, Low Budget album. There are things we see on the surface that we show all the time. There are also pieces of us that we will not show. At 25 years old, we get stuck in the trivial life, just existing, always believing that tomorrow, next week, month, or year will be different. At 35, it is the same thing, as is 45 and 55. But of course, by now you realize that it is happening.

If I could have the 58-year-old perspective at 21, everything would be so much less messy. At 58, all of the days that I have just settled for mock any kind of wisdom I might think to turn over as cards to win the game. I lament how my generation and the one before it was solving everything, but we have only made things worse. I do not feel sorry for me but for my kids. 

As I look in the mirror, in my eyes I see the person who has looked back decade after decade. Secretly I wish to send messages back to him. Nothing too deep, just a practical slap to wake up.

If I think about it too much, I become agitated. The longer I dwell on it, my anger grows, and I want to just start screaming and not stop until it clears away all of the superficial cobwebs that I no longer have the patience for.

Anger has always been a tool for me, a matter of propulsion to get motivated. I do not know any other way. I somehow know in my heart that I would not even exist without it. Each according to our gifts I guess.

I have mentioned this many times in writing that I have an associative memory. Things that I see and hear that have nothing to do with things in my life actually hold pockets of memory of my life. It would also seem that there is no expiration date on said pockets of seemingly lost memories.

When we leave the house, we put the TV on for the dog, she is more calm if she cannot hear every noise outside while we are gone. We used to do YouTube but it will time out after a while. Roku Live will play indefinitely. So we have been putting on Little House on the Prairie for her. Something happened to the whole Little House-watching world sometime around the year 2000. We forgot about all of the fun, warm, and wholesome moments the nine seasons of this show gave us and only remembered the horrible personal disasters that were also laced into the show. Alice Garvey and Mary's baby dying in a fire, Laura's baby dying from illness, the plague that wiped out part of the town due to rat infestation of the food supply, and of course, Mary going blind.

Inevitably, with this show just playing in the background, it has pulled us in and we end up watching whole episodes from time to time. Some nights, instead of surfing through the disgusting lack of quality that exists in modern-day streaming, we just let Little House roll. I noticed something. I am finding that some of my personal memories are attached to scenes of that show that aired especially during the times that I was between the ages of 9 and 15. The show began in 74 and we lived in Torrington, Connecticut. Torrington was a unique small industrial city in a valley in the northwest hills of Connecticut.

Fragmented memories of my 5-year stay in the mid-1970s Torrington have drifted in and continue to do so. Sixth grade, standing in the woods behind Torringford School face to face with Michelle Deleo and her saying the line to me, "Knowing you." Instantly when I think of that point in space and time Abba suddenly shouts out at me: "Knowing me, knowing you, ah haaa, there is nothing we can do..." because my brain did that in the moment we were standing there. A couple of days ago, I did a Google Street Level drive around Torrington and looking at the backyard of the school into the woods, I can see the exact spot that happened 47 years ago.

About this virtual drive around Torrington. I see sadness and decay. Yeah, we had the Keep America Beautiful commercial with the crying Indian from 1970 telling us that we ruined everything, but let me tell you something. The houses were more beautiful, the roads and sidewalks were not crumbling, and the bridges were not falling apart. Today, despite great efforts at restoration and repurposing, there is still a sad post-apocalyptic feel to the drive.  I am sure this is not the case for someone from a later generation.

The vinyl siding revolution of the 80s and 90s took away the beautiful character of the homes built throughout the 1800s during the Industrial Revolution and placed upon them all of the architectural charm of a latex glove. I lived in 3 such homes in Torrington. We moved into the 2nd-floor apartment on James Street in 1974, Main Street in April 1976, and East Main Street in February of 1977. In April of 1979, we moved back to Bristol, never to live in Torrington again.

It is the world that was so different though. It was a world in which radio and newspapers were the pulse of everything that was happening. It is different for me than for many people in the world. As my life changed, so did my permanent geographical location. So, I do not and have not seen anyone I went to school with. It is like all of that is on a different planet for me. Even in my adult life, I have had 4 separate existences. Different places to live, different jobs, different family, different friends. 

It was on James Street that I made my first individual claim to music, to having a voice as a person. It was in the attic of Main Street on July 13, 1976, when I discovered WKBW in Buffalo, NY. It was at 541 East Main Street where I got my first job working for the landlord, sweeping hallways and sidewalks, mowing the lawn with one of the old manual push grass cutters, raking and shoveling snow, whitewashing walls, and building cement walls. The Hartford Civic Center roof collapsed while we lived there. We endured the blizzard of 78 there and also did not have a car for 2 years, and for a while, we had no refrigerator either. 

During that time, some nights the only option was from the Burger King down the road from us. I would walk down there and get our food to go. Two double cheeseburgers, two Whopper Juniors, 4 large fries, 3 medium cokes, and 1 medium rootbeer. With tax, $6.14. I knew it by heart.

There was a real coming of age period in the latter years for me hear. One night in the fall of 78 I discovered my attraction to alcohol, as well as my addiction to cigarettes. When I hear Paradise By the Dashboard Light it takes me back to a crazy night back in 78.

My last spring in Torrington was 1979. Heart of Glass by Blondie was riding high on the charts as was Rod Stewart’s DaYa Think I’m Sexy. Mork and Mindy, and Saturday Night Live were top of the top. Times were changing though. By March everything that had been the way it was began to unravel. This was not a bad thing either. There were old habits that just needed to stop.

We left Torrington in a very different way than we had arrived, although our arrival was also unorthodox.

The associative memory always intrigues me. It can be such a rabbit hole. Thanks to that I can remember so many days of my life 50 years ago as if they were yesterday. Liam and Noah have this exact thing too. I think it is a gift. It helps me to understand things better, and appreciate the people in my life more fully. 

I am not sure who gave me this. I have conversations with my mother and she has a remarkable memory, I wonder sometimes if both she and my father were the perfect storm that could cause this amazing phenomenon.