Saying goodby to the garbage man and other stories.

Fine, join us, you're welcome.

I don't take strong drink . . . tip a jar for me . . .

Tonight with dinner we're having a salad with spinach, swiss chard, butter lettuce, fat early peas, flat snap peas, baby carrots and fresh raspberries -- all picked just now from our yard.

As I paint over the memories inside I find that it is the outside that will be the hardest to leave. I didn't come by gardening naturally. I never had the inclination. Then Mo moved in and he wanted to dig.

Scared, confused, sometimes violent, sometimes sad, sometimes so sweet, Mo wanted to dig away at.... something. I bought him a Mo sized shovel and pointed to the western fence line. He dug.

And as he dug I threw in seeds. And things started calming down and things started to sprout. It wasn't a very good garden but it served it's purpose well.

Over the years we have become much more organized and this year's garden is spectacular. It's truly a victory garden. A history garden.

As I look at at the garden through the window of my Kotex fresh kitchen I hope that whoever buys this house loves our garden.

We might not ever have another one.

Mo doesn't need to dig much anymore.

And that's good.

We might have found a house. It just came on the market yesterday and Mr. B went to have a look. It's a "fixer" with a big yard "waiting to be landscaped". Tucked amid the lovingly restored homes, it is considered a real steal.

I went into a frenzy of cleaning and, of course, the phone rang and, of course it was Auntie T.

<sigh>

She wanted to pick Mo up for a while on July 4 for a visit with his great-grandparents. Now we haven't heard from Auntie T in 3 months, haven't seen her in 6 months, haven't seen the g-gparents in more than a year. In the nearly 5 years Mo has been with us his g-gparents have called here exactly once. They threw his mother out when she became pregnant. She lived on the streets for a while. They had nothing to do with Mo until his mom broke up with the man they hated. Then they had little to do with him. I don't like them, I don't respect them, I prefer that Mo never be contaminated by them but I know that's not really my decision to make.

So anyway....

Why now? Why now does everybody love him and want to see him when things are so crazy for him and he's so emotional and I'm hanging on by my fingernails to keep him calm?

So anyway....

I talked it over with Mr. B and then I talked it over with Mo. Mo said "No."

So today I had to call back and deliver the No and steeled myself to hearing how they all loved him and missed him and gosh, has it really been so long and how g-gparents are old and sick (alcohol poisoning would be my guess) and won't be around forever and how Mo should really spend some time with them before they die and....

I thought "Well can't they just go ahead and die?" but what I said was "Sorry".

I'm a terrible person.

So anyway.....

Whew, this has been a long time coming. I'm so glad that you are in a position to say "no" to those people, now. Or at least, convey Mo's "no."

House sounds promising...

No is a good thing to learn to say.

A fixer upper eh! renovators delight is what they call em here... are the foundations sound?

Mumpad saw this. What does one eybrow cocked and a small smile mean?

Am I in danger, should I run?

I think you're safe. If anyone knows what a catch you are it's mumpad.

I haven't seen the house yet -- only a few photos. According to Mr. B the structure of the house is fine. I'm really surprised that he is looking at old houses. I love them but he's always been afraid.

It's a pretty house with lovely bones and a nice yard. It looks like it was last updated in the 70s or so and, more recently with many gallons of primer.

I dreampt she was stolen By arabs (or something) I had to negotiate to get her back. They laugheded at my offer of 6 camels a goat, and a 250 gram tub of black olives ( dreams have weired stuff).

Eventually I had to anti up with eight good camels!!!

I sent her off to the hairdressers. I think I'm safe for the time being?

(She's fine boomer dont worry)

Fifteen years ago we arrived back at the big empty house on 14th Street after dropping off my youngest at his new apartment in Dallas. He was starting his career as a rock and roll drummer. I was ending my career as a hovering parent. Saying goodbye and good luck was a hard moment. I bawled for a good bit of the drive back north. That was Dallas as in Dallas,Texas, and we were in Tulsa with a two story house and two people to rattle around in it. Shucks

(When Eva was talking about her son going to Japan back a few weeks ago, I thought of that moment in Dallas. The Circle Game plays in the background.) Anyway. ..... .

With the house empty of kids, we decided to move to New York City so we wouldn't die of boredom.

That's right. We just decided.

Then we set to work on making it happen. First, we moved out of the big house into a much smaller two bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive. That got us to get rid of about half of our crap. Then we started to live as if we already lived in New York City. We walked to the grocery store on Peoria. We walked to the restaurants to have dinners out. We read the New York Times on Sunday and I upped my subscription to the New Yorker Magazine. I got really good at doing the laundry while running down the river trail. (Run 38 minutes, return, put clothes in dryers, run for 54 minutes.)

We tried to imagine what it was like to be in New York City. The noises, the smells, the weather, the people, what would it be like? We played the here and there game, here (in Tulsa) everyone needs a car, there, no one needs a car. Here, the cats can wander over to the side of the complex's pool, there, they will be inside 24-7. Here, the only food delivered is Pizza, there, order in anything on the face of the earth.

It took us two years to save the money and get about ready when, of course, things jumped. I got a call about some writing of mine and I needed to go to New York.

So. .... we just did.

No real job.
No apartment lined up.
Not many connections, but just enough.

I bought a one-way ticket to Newark and took the train into the city.

Mrs. Joe Nation stayed behind to finish packing, finish selling the furniture and she packed the U-haul.

I walked the streets of Washington Heights for about ten days (staying with a friend at night) before finding an apartment and I got what I thought would be a part-time job at the hardware store a few days before that. Mrs. Joe drove the truck with the cats and another friend of ours up from the banks of the Arkansas across the George Washington Bridge to our new place in the hills of New York City.

Our pretending paid off, there wasn't any culture shock to speak of. We had become New Yorkers in our minds months before, now we were.

It will be 13 years ago Labor Day . We like it here.


The kiddo flies in or drives in from Dallas where he is still playing in a rock and roll band.


Joe(the pastrami tastes amazingly better than I ever imagined)Nation

Nice story, joe, thanks for telling.

Stories of Tulsa always make me think of moving. Maybe because I wanted to get away or maybe because sometimes I think about moving back there or maybe because I lived on...

18th street between Cincinatti and Detroit
18th street on the corner of Norfolk (across from the Unification Church)
a block off 41st and Riverside
in the Velda Rose apartments near the University (where the bikers took care of me)
a block of 15th and Harvard
on Detroit between 16th and 17th
a block from Hillcrest (the wrong way)
on Baltimore between 16th and 17th (what the hell was I thinking!?"
on Denver on the corner of 16th
two blocks off 31st and Harvard

there might be more.

This was all in the space of maybe six years.

Well, Joe. That answers quite a few questions I've always wanted to ask you but haven't. 13 years, you say? It can't be. That's just not possible.

With Joe's permission, Boomer, I will tell you his "Moving to NYC" story as I saw it at the time.

I'm pretty sure about the 13 years counting forward to this Labor Day, but it could be twelve, I need a recount.

Joe(and a recounting from your perspective)Nation

Ohhh, you two better spill or I'm going to spin this into a real Joe and Eva sitting in a tree thing.

You really don't know the "Joe and Eva sitting in a tree" story yet, boomer?

No, I don't.

<A2K needs a gossip column>

And as the garbage man rode off into the sunset, he slightly cocked his head to the side, smirked, and said to himself, "that's a good kid right there." Then tossed the hat in the back with the rest of the garbage.

Well, in that case:

once upon a time there was a little Eva and a little Joe. They ..


What am I doing? Eva wanted to tell the story!

That's fine. I really don't care what happened to the hat.

I DO care about the little Eva and Joe story....

<tap, tap, tap>

<tap tap tap>

We made an offer on the house.
















We aren't the only ones.

<TAP TAP TAP>