First of all, I apologize for the blank photos! It seems I have to enter each one manually onto Blogspot, and that's a process.So for now, here is chapters 9 and 10, requiring. your imagination!
Chapter 9
Chester Vermont
The next day, we’re on Route 91 heading north, past Brattleboro Vermont, to the town of Chester, where we’ll meet our friends Barb and Rudi. It’s been entirely too long since we’ve seen them, and I’ve been a bit upset by it. The four of us have had at least twenty-five Thanksgiving weekends together: one year at our house, the next year at theirs. But for various reasons, we’ve missed the last two. Janet and I have tried to get us together before now—I’d texted Barb twice over the past year, not indirectly saying that we missed them. And when my texts were pretty much ignored, I sent a third one, and this time I manipulatively added: we miss you both and we need to see you!...unless you don’t care!
In the early seventies, Barb and Rudi moved to Vermont from Des Moines Iowa, where they first met Janet. They bought an old run-down Vermont farmhouse on a mountain, deciding that Rudi’s full-time job would be to fix the place up, piece by piece. Now, about forty years later, Rudi’s done fixing but the place is not fixed. He’s a perfectionist and it sounds like Barb has reached her limit for unfinished bathrooms and furniture still in storage with nowhere to go. I should add that Rudi is a talented oil painter and he’s learned the home repair business on his own. He’s also perfectionistically slow and Janet and I are glad to hear that Barb’s hired someone to finish up. Rudi rolls his eyes when she tells us this.
On this day we meet, finally, at The Country Girl Diner. The four of us sit in a corner booth with red vinyl seats and shiny chrome accessories, including a squeaky-clean chrome napkin holder, and for several hours we talk non-stop. We’re encouraged to linger by a very nice waitress named Kelly, who we later find out, by some unfathomable coincidence, is known to Ginger of Kevin and Ginger. “She’s a doll,” Ginger later tells us, and, just by the way she waited on the four of us for three hours, and also left us alone, we agreed.
Once we order our drinks and food, it's not long before Janet tells Rudi that the last time they talked by phone, he pretty much told her he didn’t need to see us, and he added something like, “You don’t really know me, anyway.” Not one to let things fester, I ask Rudi why he said that, and he’s surprised.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he explains, “I meant because you’re not in my day-to-day life.” He could have added, “and I wish you were,” but he didn’t have to. We’re actually more confident in the depth and longevity of our friendship than he is, but none-the-less, we’re all glad to affirm that somehow, and we did.
This is a reminder not to let hurt feelings fester. Intent is all too easy to misunderstand. “Okay,” we all say, “good that that’s cleared up; it’s great to be together again.”
*****
The highlight of our day in Vermont isn’t just Barb and Rudi. If you’ve never been to Southern Vermont, put that right away on your bucket list. You’ll see lumber yards and fifty-foot felled trees scraped and piled atop of another on extra-long transport trucks, and classic weathered barns that either stand proudly or look like you could blow them down with your own breath, and green hills and mountains in the distance, and viewing it all, I’m betting you’ll recognize a modest, almost impoverished simplicity that none-the-less shines through the houses and junkyards.
When we get back to Greenfield, Marsha invites us to her improvisation group that night. At seven o’clock, about twenty people, including Kevin and Ginger, sit in a circle in her living room and Marsha is clearly the self-appointed head honcho. She reviews the rules and the assignments, and I can tell there are a couple of people in the group who irritate her. I chuckle to myself about it: she’s doing her best to be polite, but she’s also comfortable being bossy, and it’s her house, after all. Over the next two hours, the group acts out a good dozen improvs–a blind date, a grocery order, a chance meeting. Lasting about twenty minutes each, they are wrapped around enthusiasm and laughter. Mattie joins in this festivity, curled up on the couch between me and Ginger.
The next morning, we wrap up a nice visit with Marsha and Norm, and with our former neighborhood and the back roads. Western Massachusetts is a place we can always return to: it’s been planted inside us. If you ask me if the area is a good place to live and raise a family, my answer a giant YES.
Chapter 10
Merritt Parkway CT & Philadelphia PA
We hit the road Wednesday morning for a five-hour drive to Philadelphia. We easily decide to forego Route 84--the Connecticut Turnpike-- in favor of the Merritt Parkway, which runs thirty-seven miles from the Housatonic River in Stratford Connecticut to Greenwich and the New York State line. The Merritt is known for its scenic layout, its stylist signs, and its elaborate overpasses. We’re on a mini-highway, but the gentle inclines and trees on both sides don’t feel like a highway. We make what feels like our first ‘official’ road trip stop at Jane’s Lakeside Diner in Stamford. We consider this official because we’re now on our own, and we will be until we hit Florida. Janet and I have a relaxing lunch in a bustling place that specializes in homemade donuts. We both have chocolate ice cream sodas to celebrate our day, and we bring Mattie a grilled hamburger to celebrate her back-seat adventure.
Our Ptown neighbors Nicole and Sophia live in Philadelphia. They are the best neighbors, but even more than that, we’re becoming great friends. We share meals, family news, and happenings, sometimes daily.
Nicole and Sophia bought the single-family old captain’s house kitty corner to ours with plans to rent it out in high season and come and go the rest of the time as their Philly and Manhattan professional jobs allowed. But things changed once they got here, and they decided not to rent at all. The thrill of Provincetown can do that: it’s hard to resist the town’s creative surge, the brilliant ocean, the shimmering light, the surrounding sand dunes, and the very funky vibe. Ultimately Nicole and Sophia put their Philadelphia house on the market, and bought a smallish condo in Jersey City for commuting to work, but not before Nicole invited us and Mattie to stay overnight with her at their house in the West Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.
Even with our GPS we can’t find the house, so for a time we drive around the Germantown area, admiring all the stone buildings and blocks upon blocks of attached houses. Each has a different color and different doors and almost all are well maintained, but one to the other, they’re all connected for the entire length of the blocks. We also pass dozens of duplexes—houses that look like single family dwellings but they’re split down the middle with identical designs and construction on both sides. Nicole later tells us they’re called twins. And to add to the fascinating architecture, we also find a number of houses with actual polka dots!
While we’re still lost, we pull into a large parking lot so Janet can run into the grocery store to pick up flowers, while Mattie and I wait in the car and I try to get our bearings. All the shoppers I see coming and going are African American and I realize how much I miss that diversity in my day-to-day life. I had a long-term relationship with a black woman–my first lesbian love–and by association with her family. We were together almost three years, through my daughter’s toddlerhood and my divorce and my sexual confusion. Until I met Janet years later, she was the great love of my life. Until she left and broke my heart.
*****
Janet returns with a bouquet of fresh flowers and we try again to find Nicole’s house. We finally call her for street-by-street guidance and finally we pull up to an orange and yellow house with an enclosed front porch. Nicole greets us warmly, serves us a sweet chicken and vegetable dinner and tells us about life in Philadelphia and her legal work in Manhattan. She woos Mattie with dog treats. Even though Sophia’s back in Provincetown, we spend the evening delightfully getting to know our new friends. We’ve bonded quickly–unusual for me. Sitting in the living room I notice a poster on the living room wall of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Yup, it’s the same Barnum family. As a follow-up, Nicole pulls out her laptop and shows us a 1954 video of her grandfather Barnum presenting a training session to a small group of professional businessmen. He’s drawing a woman in cartoon form as he talks. He’s lecturing on the corporate benefits of these men respecting their employees as much as they respect their wives. This is clearly outdated and politically iffy, but it’s a training concept developed long before anything like this was in vogue in corporate America. I’m fascinated. In my own consulting work, I’ve developed dozens of training programs and I’m impressed by how Mr. Barnum ties together the concept of respecting women and respecting employees. It’s an outdated stereotype about men and women and marriage to be sure, but in 1954 this was novel.
*****
We’re only three days into our road trip and already we’re engrossed in new experiences with wonderful people. When Janet and I slip into bed that night, we giggle that we’re embarking on the trip of a lifetime. And Mattie has been easy peasy. We’ve spread her baby blue and white cloud blanket on the bed but she wants to get to Nicole on the floor above us. In the dark we hear her pitter-patter feet trying to climb the stairs, but she keeps chickening out. She finally settles on the bed with us, twirls around a few times, and we all sleep soundly.
The next morning Nicole takes us to a nearby trail where Mattie can run and where I wait at a sidewalk coffee shop sipping a cappuccino. I have a chronic back problem and my walking will be limited on this trip. I’m not sure how significantly it will affect us but my attitude is good and I’m determined to do what I can do and not to complain or be embarrassed about what I can’t do. Lucky for me, Janet’s a good sport about it.
We leave Nicole with a promise to keep in touch. She and Sophia will keep watch on our house. We say a fond goodbye with zero knowledge of the Covid plague that will be in full force when we next see her.
