Home as Castle – My Bastion Here in the Hinterland
As a hard-living, hard drinking, sort of go-getter when I felt like it, with a constant hangover, my bachelor pad in Bracebridge played host residence to a hundred or more humdinger after-hours’ events. The get-togethers were always after something or other. A game of hockey. A council meeting that had bored us to tears. A day of work, a week of work, the celebration of a lunar eclipse. We always found a way of celebrating life and its foibles. By definition, we were kind of “real life foibles,” ourselves. But we tried not to be intrusive with our emotional releases. Some neighbors would argue to the contrary that we didn’t try hard enough, and they had no choice but to share our celebrations.
While I have always written about my assorted wee residences over the decades, there has always been humor and anecdote attached…..they were by definition “abodes” but the craziness that was harbored within made them only half-residential, the other half seemingly fictional. I have never, for instance, been all that proud, even in retrospect, to have been the near legendary host of a half dozen spaghetti barbecues in the early 1980’s. I awoke at dawn on those mornings to gather up the empties that were strewn down the street by my badly behaved apartment guests. If you’ve ever heard about the lifestyle adopted by wild-side writer-reporter-kind, then you can appreciate that having a room full can be an administrative nightmare. While I have always been a “nester,” loving the respective digs in which I dwell, my Bracebridge apartment was very much a halfway house…..we were halfway to becoming alcoholics or really good writers in-waiting; dealing with their ongoing social contraventions. I awoke one morning to find that one of my guests had broken an expensive, custom made canoe paddle, and shoved the two pieces just above the nativity scene. It was some type of social commentary I’m sure, or a particularly negative review of my party hosting capability.
After marriage, and a few hangover get-togethers with that old gang of mine, my wife suggested it was time that I grew up, and distanced from the ringleaders able to get me to drink more than my budget of booze. I was more offended by the fact she didn’t believe me to be ringleader material, than the reality she was asking me to get rid of the crumb bums of spaghetti barbecue days. After a period of feeling at loose ends, without a half dozen spent reporters on my sofa set, I had a chance to appreciate more fully this “home” thing I had desired all these years since my own childhood.
Here it is the spring of 2007 and my homestead feelings, this writer in residence nestled amidst more books than the public library, has again been intruded upon,….. violated; its security breached by a good intentioned but typically wayward neighbor who adores getting into my backyard. Now while this may seem pretty darn trivial in the grand scheme of intrusions, especially with my own history of housing half the town at my shindigs, I’ve really taken to heart this privacy thing after a weighty stint in the public domain.
Since I began writing and getting published regularly in the local press, which began in earnest back in the late 1970’s, and getting involved in public initiatives such as launching groups like the Historical Society and a community museum in Bracebridge, along with my many other public commitments, I confess to sinking into homelife gently and calmly. When I had more than a few readers angered at the editorial opinion of the newspaper, or perturbed at the bias of a particular column, I could always count on this oasis to keep me out of the public eye at least temporarily. I even developed a rather curious angst about phone calls. I would answer them religiously during the day but I have long made it clear that I won’t be available after hours. I didn’t have this privilege when I was a reporter because fires, accidents and news events don’t stick to business hours.
After quite a number of years out of the day-to-day reporting, editorial grind, I still get calls from news sources expecting I will hop on over to their place for a really big scoop. While I am published more widely and successfully today than I ever was working for the community press alone, I still get a fair number of phone calls and personal appearances from folks looking to give me future story ideas. Most are rather self serving projects, like the guy who asked me to write his biography and carry the expense to self publish. I thanked him for his input and suggested it would be an idea for the future…..”someone else’s future,” I mumbled going out the drive. In the reporting business here, I was exposed to a fair number of people who needed my help. While I was a pretty fair listener some of the story ideas cracked me up. I didn’t want to be rude but by golly, the nutters had my life planned to the final exclamation. I didn’t have any choice but to distance myself, in new writing ventures, from that old gang of mine….old reporters who don’t know when to go home, and inquisitive others who never seemed to be dislodged by my evasive actions, short of hanging up mid-conversation. I’ve only ever done that to telemarketers.
Mixed into this I had a couple of blokes who wanted to re-arrange my physical attributes after I defied their warnings about publishing stories that included their names and extent of incident participation. Impaired drivers get real testy when they read about their exploits on the front page. I’ve had death threats to boot but then it’s pretty uncommon to find a reporter who hasn’t been threatened over one incident or paragraph in their editorial past. With a young family and many other business interests, including my antique enterprise, which put us in the public domain regularly, home did become both safe haven and bastion. After a grueling week of dealing with all sorts of public interaction, and story ideas coming out the whazoo, I’d get one step up this drive here at Birch Hollow, and feel the weight of the world lifted. It wasn’t so much that it was a place to hide-out from my fetters, because they knew how to get here but it was a philosophical, poetic divide from the onslaught of good fun that I had once openly encouraged.
I felt that my passion for solace and escape created a sort of invisible shield around the maples and evergreens, the lilacs in the front yard flanking our beautiful imported raspberry canes. We had plucked them from a raspberry garden at the family cottage on Lake Rosseau, in the Village of Windermere. Although our property is typically urban and unremarkable except for the clutter, it has all the attributes of a castle we can afford. I don’t have a moat or a rock wall, with a spiked iron gate, to exclude guests and assorted other folks who wander up my lane. I don’t even have a sign begging people to leave this scribe alone. And we routinely answer the door to an amazing collection of peddlers and the like, wishing to massage our financial resources for yet another worthy cause. In fact, I can’t imagine getting more people to our front and back door, unless I went to the extent of signing that we were offering free beer for one and all.
My wife reminds me that I began all this intrusive goodwill, except for the hawkers and peddlers, by doing a myriad of favors for all who apparently desired my services. It is true I was conned into writing thousands of promo pieces, business stories, human interest pieces, memorials, obituaries for friends who begged consideration. What hurt most of all, was that there were few, if any of these folks, who would have given me the time of day if I’d had a request of them. In fact, as soon as I left the regular reporting beat, most of these glad-handers wouldn’t even acknowledge me on the street, if there was only two of us on the whole block.
My boys believe I’ve become somewhat reclusive in my mid-life crazy years, and I would be hard pressed to deny that I do rather enjoy slinking away from the rat race that thrives in perpetuity a few steps beyond this relative safe haven. I have filled this home with stuff that pleases me. Antiques and paintings, sculptures and books, books, and more books. I couldn’t be bored or dissatisfied for long in this place of intrigue, because there’s always a nook or cranny to explore, full of time’s curiosities. As far as writing goes, I’m inspired just waking up and looking around. At the rate I buy and sell this stuff, the mood changes here on a daily basis. It’s the stuff creative writers adore. Odd shapes, strange titles, mysterious portals, thought-provoking images. It’s like a poet-artist exploded here, and left their inspirations everywhere.
I will often immerse myself in some writing jag and spend three hours or more huddled over the keyboard without realizing I’m oh so much older than when I began. Geez I’ve missed some appointment(s), maybe a scheduled pick-up of a now stranded loved one. While I adore company, I can no longer write in the midst of turmoil as I once did in a crowded, sandwich pitching, coffee swilling newsroom. Just now there was another knocking at the door that sent the hound, Bosko, on a wild howl downstairs to unceremoniously greet yet another salesperson. I frequently demand that Bosko, for his treats, exercise security around here, and at times she’s been known to keep my wife outside a few moments longer, in order that I can finish a thought without her friendly editorial inquisition. I recognize this will seem offensive to some, admitting that I keep my wife out of the editorial loop. The reality is we’ve had a longstanding agreement that she won’t read my stuff unless it relates to her directly. It’s an agreement that has held from the mid 1980’s to the present. Artistic license allows me to get away with a lot of stuff. I’ve mentioned her in this column but I’m not going to tell her. Unless you tell her, I’ll go unpunished.
For all these years spent holed-up at Birch Hollow, this is the year I have to get forceful about unplanned, unwelcome visitations. I have way too many people banging the varnish off my doors these days, selling everything from fresh fish to aluminum siding, fundraising chocolate bars to lawn maintenance and everything imaginable in between. A while ago I came back to the house to pick something up that I had forgotten, and heard several people talking in my back yard. They had the nerve of criticizing the “guy that owns, and doesn’t maintain this place,” and then trying to shake my hand as they found me coming round the corner. I asked them to leave three times before it finally sank in that their version of the Bible and mine, were simply not going to mesh that morning.
This past summer we had the most beautiful and draping fern canopy, abutting our lawn, we had ever seen since constructing our front gardens. One afternoon my son came to tell me that a neighbor was cutting our lawn. I was in the middle of a feature column for an antique publication, only a few moments from deadline, and I abruptly suggested that he must be mistaken as it was “impossible,” and “they know damn well where the property line is.” He came back a few moments later and said, “Dad, you know those ferns?” “Why yes, son,” I replied while trying to maintain the structure of a sentence on the computer. “Well, they’re gone.” And they were. It seems a lodger at my neighbor’s homestead had decided to do a good turn and mow the lawn, and amidst all the enthusiasm and kindness being bestowed had clearly ignored things like property rights and fern bylaws….which in my books noted quite clearly….”don’t you even think about touching them!” When I arrived out front and saw that about twenty feet of our lawn and lovely ferns had been mowed to the level of a putting green, I nearly imploded. I did however, have the good sense to return indoors before screaming, and after a short while of interior ranting, I emerged with a new plan to save the last remaining ferns. You know what they say about best laid plans.
The same chap cut our lawn three more times before we erected a new garden with sturdy iron post right in the middle of his path of choice. I watched the day he approached the bar, tipped his hat, scratched his head, looked at the property marker, and finally got the message he’d been cutting the wrong lawn. We all agreed that if he had violated our property with the strategically placed garden in place, we would then have had to erect a honking big sign to “Mow Off!”
For a person who thought he’d be wandering aimlessly from gig to gig, digs to digs for the rest of my life, my nesting instinct has paid wonderful dividends at this grey, balding time of life. And while my partners in this ballywick now refer to me as the whack-a-mole neighbor, because I pop out when least expected, I like living at Birch Hollow despite the regular intrusions. A few moments ago a thoughtful neighbor was in my backyard attempting to deliver mail put in the wrong box. Bless her intrusive soul. But the backyard is where we hang the unmentionables, and geez, today it’s a full gallery out there. I’m thinking about a warning to interlopers about “alligator in backyard,” or “have you seen our missing cobra?”
It’s true as well, that I’d be in deep “do” if I was having a heart attack and my rescuer believed the sign….and said….”I’m scared of snakes, sorry Ted, I guess you’re going to die!”
Quirks of the Writer – Eccentricities of the Collector
A succession of girlfriends thought I was becoming a full blown nutter. My foray into writing labeled me as “artistic” and “ever-brooding,” as the wandering-aimlessly poet. Add to this my parallel interest in old stuff, as a fledgling collector, and it might explain why I chased a few of the ladies out the door with apparent madness all round. A few of these young ladies objected to the fact I was a reporter and measured up to all the lifestyle excesses expected of a newsie who liked the boozie. Got to admit I was a confluence of a lot of weird interests…..tolerable one at a time but a dangerous, conflicting undertow working the emotions of the same body.
It’s kind of funny now because I was always dead serious about my professions. At least then. Today I’m serious about very little except the outrageous taxation in this country and urban sprawl. As a writer I guess my brooding is still hale and hardy but I’ve got a much better sense of humor. As a collector, I’m over most of the excesses I think, unless of course I find a horse-drawn hearse or a coffin with a window I’ve always wanted to own. I’ve tried to buy both but fell short a couple of grand.
I think if any peculiarity these days, it’s my penchant for story grinding, which may explain why friends detour any which way out of my path, to avoid hour long sessions about my latest obsession. My wife has had to adjust to “new normal,” four or five times a year depending on my need for broader horizons. I’m on a freedom loving crusade now and want rid of my shackles…..these old books that clutter each room, and from a writer’s perspective, I want rid of all the old story-lines and historic fetters that have kept me coming back to the same old overdone explorations year after year.
I have always believed I would be a writer until death. I’ve already given my antique enterprise to son Robert in the event of my demise, and judging by the look of “oh by the Jesus,” he will insist I leave him a lot less rather than a lot more stuff to cope with. I will leave both boys my manuscripts, a few half written novels, a book of prose I’ve been working on for the past six months, and a brief biography of how I got sucked into the antique business way back when.
Out of about ten girlfriends before I got married to charming bride Suzanne, most of my female chums liked the passionate writer-side more than the weasel-kind scrounger I was becoming due to the collecting bug. They liked clinging onto my arm when we got to go to grand openings and extravagant dinners, at posh resorts, as a partner to a well known writer…. but distanced themselves when I started stroking the vintage furniture and collectables adorning the place. The collector side couldn’t have cared less about a relationship, other than with a coveted piece of this or that void of a pulse. The terrible twinning of collector and writer has never really worked all that well, in romantic pursuits, until I began penning columns for trade publications. I guess it in some way smacked of a scholarly, academic character buried somewhere beneath the ever-questing, holy grail sleuthing, writer-collector with the bumper sticker that read, “Back off- I stop at all yard sales. So should you!” I could be driving along talking to some wonderful lady about great literature one moment, and be haggling with some yard sale vendor for an old vase five minutes later. Not particularly romantic but it’s me!
At this mid-life crazy period I’m not really sure what the future holds. Suzanne will be retiring one of these days and we have follied with the idea of opening a small antique shop somewhere in the District of Muskoka. I hate the idea of being tied down to a any location except this abode at Birch Hollow, and frankly the writer’s urge demands that I live forever-more a wanderer’s existence. I love my home as I’ve written about frequently but I’ve always had this one huge common area between the life of the writer and the passion of the collector, and that is to hit the open road as frequently as possible. Seeing new sites, new vistas, horizons, sunrises and sunsets over different land and waterscapes appeals to the creative interests of the writer, the antique shop over the hillside and around the bend, encourages the flicker into a flame for the collector. Suzanne however, I believe, would like very much to find a small rural home to carry on a craft business, and I know it’s what would please her moreso than driving anywhere, anymore. You see, this is the poor, charitable woman who inherited the conflicted soul, that’s me, and has endured the lure of the open road over so many, many years. As a persuasive writer and a nagging, manipulative antique fanatic, she has always gone along with the plan I’ve presented for free weekends…… even though in her estimation, a stint at home would do wonders for the weary, half lost soul.
I expect the compromise must come from me this time in our lives. I am sure we will find a little homestead somewhere around here, that will suit her sewing, fabric enterprise, and hopefully offer me a few acres to explore and pen poetic, just as I’ve benefited from the setting here at Birch Hollow. Suzanne deserves this after a lengthy career as a teacher, and for once the collector-writer has found the sensitivity to land back as husband and soul mate, a situation long overdue.
In these mature years I propose to write when the urge strikes, and collect when opportunity prevails but alas in proportion to the time required to help Suzanne run her business. I’m such a liar.
Maybe it was on a full moon that I was bitten in slumber by a vampire with interest in literature and antiques. I’ll never know why or how but I’m not expecting these fangs to fall out any time soon.
Suzanne keeps reminding me that my mentor Dave Brown made a choice…..books or a wife, and his wife got the short straw.
On occasion I’ve given up on my pursuits, one at a time, and even both on occasion when I developed an enduring frustration the result of overlapping failures. I sort of expect my future compromise, for the good of the union, will be to collect fabric antiquities instead of books and write about vintage quilts and textiles instead of regional history and current events. Suzanne knows I can never fully retire from either but she’s learned a few tricks along the way, to bring the obsessed back to the hearth for re-kindling.
I’m rushing these last sentences to completion because the thrift shop uptown has just now opened. Oh gads, here I go again! The collector hurrying up the writer to get to the point.
The moral of the story is….you’re going to have a beggar of a time finding a partner as tolerant as mine!
As a hard-living, hard drinking, sort of go-getter when I felt like it, with a constant hangover, my bachelor pad in Bracebridge played host residence to a hundred or more humdinger after-hours’ events. The get-togethers were always after something or other. A game of hockey. A council meeting that had bored us to tears. A day of work, a week of work, the celebration of a lunar eclipse. We always found a way of celebrating life and its foibles. By definition, we were kind of “real life foibles,” ourselves. But we tried not to be intrusive with our emotional releases. Some neighbors would argue to the contrary that we didn’t try hard enough, and they had no choice but to share our celebrations.
While I have always written about my assorted wee residences over the decades, there has always been humor and anecdote attached…..they were by definition “abodes” but the craziness that was harbored within made them only half-residential, the other half seemingly fictional. I have never, for instance, been all that proud, even in retrospect, to have been the near legendary host of a half dozen spaghetti barbecues in the early 1980’s. I awoke at dawn on those mornings to gather up the empties that were strewn down the street by my badly behaved apartment guests. If you’ve ever heard about the lifestyle adopted by wild-side writer-reporter-kind, then you can appreciate that having a room full can be an administrative nightmare. While I have always been a “nester,” loving the respective digs in which I dwell, my Bracebridge apartment was very much a halfway house…..we were halfway to becoming alcoholics or really good writers in-waiting; dealing with their ongoing social contraventions. I awoke one morning to find that one of my guests had broken an expensive, custom made canoe paddle, and shoved the two pieces just above the nativity scene. It was some type of social commentary I’m sure, or a particularly negative review of my party hosting capability.
After marriage, and a few hangover get-togethers with that old gang of mine, my wife suggested it was time that I grew up, and distanced from the ringleaders able to get me to drink more than my budget of booze. I was more offended by the fact she didn’t believe me to be ringleader material, than the reality she was asking me to get rid of the crumb bums of spaghetti barbecue days. After a period of feeling at loose ends, without a half dozen spent reporters on my sofa set, I had a chance to appreciate more fully this “home” thing I had desired all these years since my own childhood.
Here it is the spring of 2007 and my homestead feelings, this writer in residence nestled amidst more books than the public library, has again been intruded upon,….. violated; its security breached by a good intentioned but typically wayward neighbor who adores getting into my backyard. Now while this may seem pretty darn trivial in the grand scheme of intrusions, especially with my own history of housing half the town at my shindigs, I’ve really taken to heart this privacy thing after a weighty stint in the public domain.
Since I began writing and getting published regularly in the local press, which began in earnest back in the late 1970’s, and getting involved in public initiatives such as launching groups like the Historical Society and a community museum in Bracebridge, along with my many other public commitments, I confess to sinking into homelife gently and calmly. When I had more than a few readers angered at the editorial opinion of the newspaper, or perturbed at the bias of a particular column, I could always count on this oasis to keep me out of the public eye at least temporarily. I even developed a rather curious angst about phone calls. I would answer them religiously during the day but I have long made it clear that I won’t be available after hours. I didn’t have this privilege when I was a reporter because fires, accidents and news events don’t stick to business hours.
After quite a number of years out of the day-to-day reporting, editorial grind, I still get calls from news sources expecting I will hop on over to their place for a really big scoop. While I am published more widely and successfully today than I ever was working for the community press alone, I still get a fair number of phone calls and personal appearances from folks looking to give me future story ideas. Most are rather self serving projects, like the guy who asked me to write his biography and carry the expense to self publish. I thanked him for his input and suggested it would be an idea for the future…..”someone else’s future,” I mumbled going out the drive. In the reporting business here, I was exposed to a fair number of people who needed my help. While I was a pretty fair listener some of the story ideas cracked me up. I didn’t want to be rude but by golly, the nutters had my life planned to the final exclamation. I didn’t have any choice but to distance myself, in new writing ventures, from that old gang of mine….old reporters who don’t know when to go home, and inquisitive others who never seemed to be dislodged by my evasive actions, short of hanging up mid-conversation. I’ve only ever done that to telemarketers.
Mixed into this I had a couple of blokes who wanted to re-arrange my physical attributes after I defied their warnings about publishing stories that included their names and extent of incident participation. Impaired drivers get real testy when they read about their exploits on the front page. I’ve had death threats to boot but then it’s pretty uncommon to find a reporter who hasn’t been threatened over one incident or paragraph in their editorial past. With a young family and many other business interests, including my antique enterprise, which put us in the public domain regularly, home did become both safe haven and bastion. After a grueling week of dealing with all sorts of public interaction, and story ideas coming out the whazoo, I’d get one step up this drive here at Birch Hollow, and feel the weight of the world lifted. It wasn’t so much that it was a place to hide-out from my fetters, because they knew how to get here but it was a philosophical, poetic divide from the onslaught of good fun that I had once openly encouraged.
I felt that my passion for solace and escape created a sort of invisible shield around the maples and evergreens, the lilacs in the front yard flanking our beautiful imported raspberry canes. We had plucked them from a raspberry garden at the family cottage on Lake Rosseau, in the Village of Windermere. Although our property is typically urban and unremarkable except for the clutter, it has all the attributes of a castle we can afford. I don’t have a moat or a rock wall, with a spiked iron gate, to exclude guests and assorted other folks who wander up my lane. I don’t even have a sign begging people to leave this scribe alone. And we routinely answer the door to an amazing collection of peddlers and the like, wishing to massage our financial resources for yet another worthy cause. In fact, I can’t imagine getting more people to our front and back door, unless I went to the extent of signing that we were offering free beer for one and all.
My wife reminds me that I began all this intrusive goodwill, except for the hawkers and peddlers, by doing a myriad of favors for all who apparently desired my services. It is true I was conned into writing thousands of promo pieces, business stories, human interest pieces, memorials, obituaries for friends who begged consideration. What hurt most of all, was that there were few, if any of these folks, who would have given me the time of day if I’d had a request of them. In fact, as soon as I left the regular reporting beat, most of these glad-handers wouldn’t even acknowledge me on the street, if there was only two of us on the whole block.
My boys believe I’ve become somewhat reclusive in my mid-life crazy years, and I would be hard pressed to deny that I do rather enjoy slinking away from the rat race that thrives in perpetuity a few steps beyond this relative safe haven. I have filled this home with stuff that pleases me. Antiques and paintings, sculptures and books, books, and more books. I couldn’t be bored or dissatisfied for long in this place of intrigue, because there’s always a nook or cranny to explore, full of time’s curiosities. As far as writing goes, I’m inspired just waking up and looking around. At the rate I buy and sell this stuff, the mood changes here on a daily basis. It’s the stuff creative writers adore. Odd shapes, strange titles, mysterious portals, thought-provoking images. It’s like a poet-artist exploded here, and left their inspirations everywhere.
I will often immerse myself in some writing jag and spend three hours or more huddled over the keyboard without realizing I’m oh so much older than when I began. Geez I’ve missed some appointment(s), maybe a scheduled pick-up of a now stranded loved one. While I adore company, I can no longer write in the midst of turmoil as I once did in a crowded, sandwich pitching, coffee swilling newsroom. Just now there was another knocking at the door that sent the hound, Bosko, on a wild howl downstairs to unceremoniously greet yet another salesperson. I frequently demand that Bosko, for his treats, exercise security around here, and at times she’s been known to keep my wife outside a few moments longer, in order that I can finish a thought without her friendly editorial inquisition. I recognize this will seem offensive to some, admitting that I keep my wife out of the editorial loop. The reality is we’ve had a longstanding agreement that she won’t read my stuff unless it relates to her directly. It’s an agreement that has held from the mid 1980’s to the present. Artistic license allows me to get away with a lot of stuff. I’ve mentioned her in this column but I’m not going to tell her. Unless you tell her, I’ll go unpunished.
For all these years spent holed-up at Birch Hollow, this is the year I have to get forceful about unplanned, unwelcome visitations. I have way too many people banging the varnish off my doors these days, selling everything from fresh fish to aluminum siding, fundraising chocolate bars to lawn maintenance and everything imaginable in between. A while ago I came back to the house to pick something up that I had forgotten, and heard several people talking in my back yard. They had the nerve of criticizing the “guy that owns, and doesn’t maintain this place,” and then trying to shake my hand as they found me coming round the corner. I asked them to leave three times before it finally sank in that their version of the Bible and mine, were simply not going to mesh that morning.
This past summer we had the most beautiful and draping fern canopy, abutting our lawn, we had ever seen since constructing our front gardens. One afternoon my son came to tell me that a neighbor was cutting our lawn. I was in the middle of a feature column for an antique publication, only a few moments from deadline, and I abruptly suggested that he must be mistaken as it was “impossible,” and “they know damn well where the property line is.” He came back a few moments later and said, “Dad, you know those ferns?” “Why yes, son,” I replied while trying to maintain the structure of a sentence on the computer. “Well, they’re gone.” And they were. It seems a lodger at my neighbor’s homestead had decided to do a good turn and mow the lawn, and amidst all the enthusiasm and kindness being bestowed had clearly ignored things like property rights and fern bylaws….which in my books noted quite clearly….”don’t you even think about touching them!” When I arrived out front and saw that about twenty feet of our lawn and lovely ferns had been mowed to the level of a putting green, I nearly imploded. I did however, have the good sense to return indoors before screaming, and after a short while of interior ranting, I emerged with a new plan to save the last remaining ferns. You know what they say about best laid plans.
The same chap cut our lawn three more times before we erected a new garden with sturdy iron post right in the middle of his path of choice. I watched the day he approached the bar, tipped his hat, scratched his head, looked at the property marker, and finally got the message he’d been cutting the wrong lawn. We all agreed that if he had violated our property with the strategically placed garden in place, we would then have had to erect a honking big sign to “Mow Off!”
For a person who thought he’d be wandering aimlessly from gig to gig, digs to digs for the rest of my life, my nesting instinct has paid wonderful dividends at this grey, balding time of life. And while my partners in this ballywick now refer to me as the whack-a-mole neighbor, because I pop out when least expected, I like living at Birch Hollow despite the regular intrusions. A few moments ago a thoughtful neighbor was in my backyard attempting to deliver mail put in the wrong box. Bless her intrusive soul. But the backyard is where we hang the unmentionables, and geez, today it’s a full gallery out there. I’m thinking about a warning to interlopers about “alligator in backyard,” or “have you seen our missing cobra?”
It’s true as well, that I’d be in deep “do” if I was having a heart attack and my rescuer believed the sign….and said….”I’m scared of snakes, sorry Ted, I guess you’re going to die!”
Quirks of the Writer – Eccentricities of the Collector
A succession of girlfriends thought I was becoming a full blown nutter. My foray into writing labeled me as “artistic” and “ever-brooding,” as the wandering-aimlessly poet. Add to this my parallel interest in old stuff, as a fledgling collector, and it might explain why I chased a few of the ladies out the door with apparent madness all round. A few of these young ladies objected to the fact I was a reporter and measured up to all the lifestyle excesses expected of a newsie who liked the boozie. Got to admit I was a confluence of a lot of weird interests…..tolerable one at a time but a dangerous, conflicting undertow working the emotions of the same body.
It’s kind of funny now because I was always dead serious about my professions. At least then. Today I’m serious about very little except the outrageous taxation in this country and urban sprawl. As a writer I guess my brooding is still hale and hardy but I’ve got a much better sense of humor. As a collector, I’m over most of the excesses I think, unless of course I find a horse-drawn hearse or a coffin with a window I’ve always wanted to own. I’ve tried to buy both but fell short a couple of grand.
I think if any peculiarity these days, it’s my penchant for story grinding, which may explain why friends detour any which way out of my path, to avoid hour long sessions about my latest obsession. My wife has had to adjust to “new normal,” four or five times a year depending on my need for broader horizons. I’m on a freedom loving crusade now and want rid of my shackles…..these old books that clutter each room, and from a writer’s perspective, I want rid of all the old story-lines and historic fetters that have kept me coming back to the same old overdone explorations year after year.
I have always believed I would be a writer until death. I’ve already given my antique enterprise to son Robert in the event of my demise, and judging by the look of “oh by the Jesus,” he will insist I leave him a lot less rather than a lot more stuff to cope with. I will leave both boys my manuscripts, a few half written novels, a book of prose I’ve been working on for the past six months, and a brief biography of how I got sucked into the antique business way back when.
Out of about ten girlfriends before I got married to charming bride Suzanne, most of my female chums liked the passionate writer-side more than the weasel-kind scrounger I was becoming due to the collecting bug. They liked clinging onto my arm when we got to go to grand openings and extravagant dinners, at posh resorts, as a partner to a well known writer…. but distanced themselves when I started stroking the vintage furniture and collectables adorning the place. The collector side couldn’t have cared less about a relationship, other than with a coveted piece of this or that void of a pulse. The terrible twinning of collector and writer has never really worked all that well, in romantic pursuits, until I began penning columns for trade publications. I guess it in some way smacked of a scholarly, academic character buried somewhere beneath the ever-questing, holy grail sleuthing, writer-collector with the bumper sticker that read, “Back off- I stop at all yard sales. So should you!” I could be driving along talking to some wonderful lady about great literature one moment, and be haggling with some yard sale vendor for an old vase five minutes later. Not particularly romantic but it’s me!
At this mid-life crazy period I’m not really sure what the future holds. Suzanne will be retiring one of these days and we have follied with the idea of opening a small antique shop somewhere in the District of Muskoka. I hate the idea of being tied down to a any location except this abode at Birch Hollow, and frankly the writer’s urge demands that I live forever-more a wanderer’s existence. I love my home as I’ve written about frequently but I’ve always had this one huge common area between the life of the writer and the passion of the collector, and that is to hit the open road as frequently as possible. Seeing new sites, new vistas, horizons, sunrises and sunsets over different land and waterscapes appeals to the creative interests of the writer, the antique shop over the hillside and around the bend, encourages the flicker into a flame for the collector. Suzanne however, I believe, would like very much to find a small rural home to carry on a craft business, and I know it’s what would please her moreso than driving anywhere, anymore. You see, this is the poor, charitable woman who inherited the conflicted soul, that’s me, and has endured the lure of the open road over so many, many years. As a persuasive writer and a nagging, manipulative antique fanatic, she has always gone along with the plan I’ve presented for free weekends…… even though in her estimation, a stint at home would do wonders for the weary, half lost soul.
I expect the compromise must come from me this time in our lives. I am sure we will find a little homestead somewhere around here, that will suit her sewing, fabric enterprise, and hopefully offer me a few acres to explore and pen poetic, just as I’ve benefited from the setting here at Birch Hollow. Suzanne deserves this after a lengthy career as a teacher, and for once the collector-writer has found the sensitivity to land back as husband and soul mate, a situation long overdue.
In these mature years I propose to write when the urge strikes, and collect when opportunity prevails but alas in proportion to the time required to help Suzanne run her business. I’m such a liar.
Maybe it was on a full moon that I was bitten in slumber by a vampire with interest in literature and antiques. I’ll never know why or how but I’m not expecting these fangs to fall out any time soon.
Suzanne keeps reminding me that my mentor Dave Brown made a choice…..books or a wife, and his wife got the short straw.
On occasion I’ve given up on my pursuits, one at a time, and even both on occasion when I developed an enduring frustration the result of overlapping failures. I sort of expect my future compromise, for the good of the union, will be to collect fabric antiquities instead of books and write about vintage quilts and textiles instead of regional history and current events. Suzanne knows I can never fully retire from either but she’s learned a few tricks along the way, to bring the obsessed back to the hearth for re-kindling.
I’m rushing these last sentences to completion because the thrift shop uptown has just now opened. Oh gads, here I go again! The collector hurrying up the writer to get to the point.
The moral of the story is….you’re going to have a beggar of a time finding a partner as tolerant as mine!
