Day 1100: in which Bob predates hipsters.

Another fine specimen of a Bob box.

This box recently found its way to me from my stepmother's basement.Its contents are mysterious: loose diodes and transistors, carefully wrapped in socks and rubber bands, several books on Calculus, a slide rule, and a half dozen of empty pill bottles with their labels ripped off.

Ingrained in my memory, this solidly-constructed box has carried varying possessions of Bob's since the 1970s!

Day 1099: in which a good box is hard to find.

Between 1974, when I was born, and 1992, when I graduated from high school, I lived in, at least, 20 different houses. Though we resided, for the most part, in Columbia County, so that I could remain in the same school through graduation, continuity where it counts being of importance to my father, we often relocated to different rentals in the area.

Whenever we moved into a new house, Bob would initially discuss decorating the house but it rarely moved past the theoretical. The boxes containing our belongings would often double as our furniture. Several stacked Xerox boxes would become the TV stand. Bed sheets tacked up would become our curtains, if there were curtains hung at all. Bob had dreams of me sewing curtains out of burlap, a material he found both sturdy and practical, but my ambition to sew was low, so they never came to fruition.

XEROX boxes worked the best.

Xerox boxes worked the best, and easy to come by, at the Internal Revenue Service offices in Albany, where my father worked as a tax auditor. Rectangularly shaped, easy to manage in size, and tidily stackable, the Xerox boxes followed us, one house to another, carrying with us only the necessary. Even when we weren't moving, Bob would often bring home these empty Xerox boxes, and stack them up, for when he was in need of a box, or a new dresser...

We were always ready to move.

Day 999. in which, no, actually.

"I like the way Indians dress. They had weird underwear," Lil stated, as she stood there in her own.

"Well. They couldn't just go online and shop for underwear; they had to make their own underwear out of the materials they had."

What? A time before the Internets...?

Lili's eyes were open wide.

"But who were the Indians?"

"Well, the Indians were the people living here when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America. They were actually the first ones here."

"No, actually, the Indian weren't here first; the dinosaurs were."

Day 987. in which there are explosives.

Day 937. in which the closet is still occupied.

Bob in September 2009.

My father, who suffers from the late-stages of early-onset Alzheimer's, has not been able to live with me for some time. Simple tasks I once took for granted - like eating, walking, talking - have become real challenges. A man who less than two years ago walked all the way from Kingston to Bloomington, albeit unintentionally, is no longer able to stand unassisted. Only five years ago, he had still regularly rode his bicycle over the New York border from his home in Cambridge, New York to West Arlington, Vermont, which only stopped after he had misplaced several bicycles.

Even though Bob's no longer living with me, his presence persists. 


Throughout the house, objects seem stranded. His wallet, once full of business cards and cash sits empty and discarded on the top of a shelf in the kitchen, its contents lost and the shell dismissed long ago.

Bob's wardrobe.

At the end of an upstairs hallway, next to the room where my father slept, is a closet which I rarely open. When I open the door, I'm faced with its contents which flood my own memory of images of the Bob I grew up with, a Bob that worked Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, week after week, month after month, year after year, in his button-down shirts, ties, and dress pants. There they are, each shirt hanging on its own hanger, each tie neatly matched with its shirt. I wonder of the last time Bob put each shirt on a hanger. He couldn't have known it'd be the last, that his entire wardrobe would prematurely be hanging in the closet of his daughter's house.

There are dress pants which I know he'll never wear again.

Despite this realization, I cannot pack up his clothes.

Day 935. in which there are NO SEX PISTOLS at the High Museum of Art!

Postcard of High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

The year was 1988! My father drove us from Kinderhook, New York to Atlanta, Georgia in his Isuzu Trooper, which lacked both an air conditioner and a radio, for our vacation in which I recall as an ungodly hot summer.

It was the summer before my freshman year in high school and the last thing I wanted to do was to ride with my father in a hot car across the country. He wouldn't let me use my Sony Walkman! He wanted a fully functioning co-pilot: awake, alert, and counting mile markers along the Interstate!

In the back of the Trooper was Bob's mini-cooler stocked with Bob-delicacies: aerosol cheese, crackers, and soda, lest we become overcome by hunger on the road!

We stopped at many rest stops, collecting bundles of tourist brochures and maps. We had quite a collection, which I would peruse through every evening, back in our motel, plotting out the next day. I was in charge of finding coupon deals for the next Econo Lodge down the line. This was the summer I learned it was "eee-con-o" (as in economy) and not "ek-a-no" --- after my father had let me continue the mispronunciation for awhile.

We safely arrived in Atlanta without my father strangling me, though I suspect it may have crossed his mind more than once.I sulked most of the trip, riddled with teen angst of the worst kind.

Out of all the tourist pamphlets I had selected, I decided the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia was the one place I wanted to visit in Atlanta. I had never been to an art museum and I thought it far more impressive than looking at steam engines in Chattanooga (which I had done, begrudgingly) or hanging out at the bar near our motel (which I had also done, begrudingly).

On the morning we left on the MARTA from I remember not where we stayed, my father didn't blink an eye at my attire. It was a bright yellow t-shirt but he paid no attention to the scribble-scrabble scrawled on the front of it. It was a t-shirt, which was acceptable attire for a teenager. It didn't help Bob that I tried to never directly face him and obfuscated the front of my t-shirt as much as possible. If I could make it all the way to the museum, what could he do about it, then?

Of course, I wanted everyone else to see it, aside from my father. By pulling this shirt over my head, I was instantly transformed into cool!

Ah, but as we approached the High Museum, it all went down.

"What does your shirt say...? What the hell are the 'Sex Pistols'...?! You can't wear that shirt to the High Museum of Art! Or ever!"

Bob immediately unbuttoned his own dress shirt and insisted I cover myself in it as he marched me back to the MARTA --- so that he could bring me back to the motel --- so that I could change my t-shirt. 

You can trust that I never wore this shirt again.

Day 922. in which I survived.

The @Amtrak conductor announced we’re about to arrive at our “final destination.” What could he know..?

Day 921. in which my boss retires and we go for crabcakes.

"Warm beer, cold food"

And they were good.

Day 918. in which the sweetest post-apocalyptic picture is drawn.

Art by Lil, Age 5.

Lil: "Their world got killed so they're looking for another world."

Me: "They look fairly happy for having just lost their world."

Lil: "They're on their way to their mother, who has blankets and food..."

Day 916. in which library books are read.

Day 912. in which my robot friend serves copious amounts of coffee.

#14. My Coffee-Making Robot Friend.

Day 909. in which there are farm animals, and disembodied hands.

A I S X P O M

It's seemingly no more than three lines of jumbled letters. However, it's actually Lil's first attempt at writing one of her stories on paper. Unfortunately, Lil is only 5, and cannot yet write.

Unable to decipher the alphabetic code, I asked Lilith for a decoding of the "story" she "wrote." Below follows a condensed version of her tale:

It was a dark and stormy night. The sheep, the lambs, the cats, the cows, the dogs, oh and the sheep, were outside sleeping in the yard. Because the storm was so frightful, the farmer decided to bring all of the animals into his house for the night to sleep.

But the farm house was not an ordinary farm house. In the dark of the night, the sheep went missing.The other animals were frightened. The dogs called for a search party.

Soon after, the sheep inexplicably reappeared but the sheep could not tell them where they had been because they were sheep.

All of a sudden, a disembodied hand floated through the air! It had no body at all. No skin. Nothing! Its ghostly hand flickered the lights in the farm house on and off, on and off, on and off!

. . . TO BE CONTINUED! 

The budding writer is working on Chapter 2.

Day 661. in which destitution falls upon the mighty.

Down and Out in Kingston, New York.

Day 648. in which I find a place I can afford to live in Upstate New York.

 Authentic + Affordable!

How can I deny this authentic Upstate experience?

At last, I found a place I can afford to live! I can't afford to buy a real home because I'm in publishing.

 This cozy camper is one-of-a-kind! Located beneath the shade of a weeping willow tree, she stays cool all spring, right up to summer!

Conveniently located next door to all amenities*, I'm ready to pack it up and move on in!

An outdoor refrigeration unit is located conveniently next to exit!** I'll keep my food cold all winter without the unnecessary expense of electric. Hear that, Niagara Mohawk? ConEd! Central Hudson! Down with the lot of you!

A little duct tape will cover up the holes on the windows and doors. Once we get the padlock off the door, it's otherwise in ready to move-in condition.*** You really must see it to believe it!



I'll have a housewarming as soon as I'm settled.

*2 miles from a public restroom at a full-service gas station.
**Everything as-is condition.
***Following extermination of rodents and slithering creatures. 

Day 643. in which we wait in the dark.

Last night, I found myself planted on the couch in my living room with a gummi worm hanging out of the side of my mouth. I wondered just how long before one of my little hell monkeys would wander by and notice?

As a child, I maintained the false belief, as I suspect many children do, that my father was an infallible, rational being. Therefore, everything he said must be universally true and right.

Father knows best.

Now that I'm a parent, I realize how fallacious this belief was. I'm taller. I pay taxes. I've evolved but I'm still the same weird kid on the inside that I've always been.

As I grew older, the world unveiled realities outside of my own microcosm and what this world reflected was that my own was more than a bit askew. My father had a lot of eccentricities that I never thought twice about until many years later.

The ride home was quiet and still, highlighted by Bob's humming. It wasn't many years later that I learned 'Starry, Starry Night' was a real song. He would sing, over and over again, only the words "Starry, Starry Night" before launching into a humming of the chorus. Only on rare occasions were we allowed to play the radio in the car. Bob considered it an unnecessary distraction.

Riding home was a time for quiet reflection.

I remember sitting in the car, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brother, even as far back as sometimes with my brother and mother together. Searching the house wasn't simply a phase. It was as routine as gluing the holes in your socks or cooking canned tuna in the spaghetti sauce, oatmeal in the burgers.

What? You don't do that..?

Returning home from an evening out, my family would wait in the car, my father instructing us to wait for the 'all clear'. We waited. In the cold, the car, this tick, tick, tick of an engine... No crickets. No humming. No speaking. Deafening silence of a winter’s night in Columbia County.

We weren't allowed to enter the house until Bob had completed a full inspection. We sat, in the dark of the car, patiently waiting for Bob to send back an indication that the house was safe and empty.

What my father actually did on the inside of the house, I never really knew, since I was always on the outside, waiting, but I can imagine him looking underneath each bed, opening all of the closets and cupboards, lest someone (something?) be hiding within.

There was never a time when Bob didn’t signal the ‘all-clear’. I don’t recall him ever giving us an escape plan. I wonder now how long I would have waited outside in the car under the dark of night?

After the house was thoroughly inspected and deemed safe by my father, a light would flicker on and off several times in a methodic fashion to signal the 'all clear'.

So, why would Bob do this?

Paranoia is a long-engrained Brown family trait.

Recently, my Aunt Barbara, who is married to my father's elder brother, Leo, relayed a story about one of the first times she went to visit Leo at his mother's home. She learned quickly that the Brown household suffered some idiosyncrasies.

Leo Brown: Then she [Ivy Brown] went from Cohoes to Cobleskill...she went to East Street. You [Bob] lived there, too. I don’t remember the house number. She was there a couple years. That’s the famous weekend when Barbara was staying with us and someone come and knocked on the front door.

Barbara Brown: We were all in the dining room and there was a knock on the front door and I suddenly found myself all alone. They were gone! Upstairs! In the other rooms! Why? Because that’s what you Browns all did. Every time. They all disappeared. I’d go to the door. I mean, Ivy, everyone, was gone.

Perhaps because of Bob’s quirks, it took longer for us to recognize symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Bob was quirky, Bob was eccentric. Nothing odd at all about gluing socks, we didn't blink an eye.

It was Bob.