lickhaven

[A fair amount of this is touched on in previous ruminations, but I thought I’d try to get most of it together in one place. It’s a result of a wonderful visit from an old friend.]

When we moved up here, year 2000, the house was uphill, at the end of an absurdly steep, winding drive, invisible from any other dwelling in the county. Our nearest neighbors were the Colonnas, down in the valley by the pond, on the other side of Lick Creek.

The Colonnas were the best neighbors anyone in history has ever had. Joe (known as Sonny to his South Philly friends) was a retired stone mason who had made marble pieces for the Vatican and various D.C. fed offices – as well as granite monuments for deceased mob members back home (I’m sure he had a booming business with Nicky Scarfo). Mimi, his wife, was the sole tough broad who hung out with the teen male up-and-coming mobsters. They both had wonderful tales to tell.

Joe would regularly plow the path to the bridge in winter for us and invite us to his summer cookouts for his South Philly friends, especially Carmine. Mimi would help anyone in the world with anything they needed while sounding like she’d willingly slice your head off.

Joe died fairly suddenly while in the hospital for a supposed not-too-serious ailment. We’d take Mimi shopping every week after that (she’d never learned to drive) and that was always a hoot – especially when she forgot to change out of PJs. She later moved down to the Philly area, where her brother, Frank, had bought her a condo. She died about 6 or 7 years back.

They one one child, Joey, in his late 30s when we first met them. Born with cerebral palsy, he had not been expected to walk or talk, but Mimi decided (and when Mimi decided, watch out!) that she would get him past that. She did. Joey is severely retarded, lurching when he walks, with limited, difficult vocabulary, but a huge sense of humor and his parents’ desire to help in any way he can. So the rest of this story is about Joey. 

When he had arguments with his parents, or just for the hell of it, he’d stump and heave up the long, steep drive to visit us. He and I would sit on the front porch, trade jokes and complaints while watching the sun go to hide behind the trees on the other side of the valley. (The time he fell on the drive and I had to haul him to his feet – he weighed probably 240 – was one of my major physical challenges.)

Joey had a rich fantasy life, but not always a bucolic one.

He loved to go bow hunting with his buddies (some of the younger South Philly tribe) and practiced with his bow and arrows in his back yard. I’d find his arrows now and then on our side of the creek. His aim was uncertain at best.

And he was convinced (with questionable help form one of Joe’s friends) that he had a $36 million contract with Princeton University for a building project. He was going to design… I never quite understood what. But it worried and obsessed him, because he realized that not being able to read limited his understanding.

When he found that Linda was a reading teacher, he asked her to teach him. Unfortunately, he thought that learning to read was something that could happen overnight; the idea that he’s have to work at it every day flummoxed him.

The crossover between his love of hunting and his design “business” led to his yearly insistence that he had to map state gameland #13, the largest hunting preserve in the county. So every spring I’d print out a 3-part map of 13, take it down to him, and he’d do his best to reproduce it on tissue paper.

Whenever I went down close to the creek to collect firewood, he’d holler out that he wanted to help. He could carry out the occasion small log, but he also wanted to help chop. I think Joe had something arranged so that Joey could handle, if not an axe, at least a hatchet, but there was no way I’d chance being responsible for how he’d handle a sharp, dangerous tool. I’d find some way to indicate I didn’t need help, or was “just about done.” That part was all a little scary.

But like his parents, he could always hold his own. When I’d go down by the bridge with the weed whacker to trim along the drive, he didn’t like the noise and would shout over, “Derek, I’m gonna sue ya!” On other occasions too he threatened to sue me for one perceived affront or another. Somehow I really respected that. Shades of Mimi!

But last Sunday afternoon was what really set off this reminiscence. Linda and I had started up the driveway when I decided I needed to check the propane level in our tank by the bridge. When I opened the car door to get back in: “Derek! Derek!” It was Joey, sitting in the breezeway between the now-uninhabited house and the garage.

We were both delighted – we’d missed Joey now for years, while he’s been living in a group home somewhere near Gladwynne, where Frank has his home – Mimi’s brother, who now owns the house.

Turns out Joey came up here with three of his housemates and their driver, Reuben, a wonderful guy who dealt with this limited quartet as fast friends. Reuben said Joey had been insisting that he had to go see his true home.

We spent probably an hour, maybe two, in Joey’s living room, just trading tales and outlooks. He told us all how he planned to come back for bow hunting, then close up the house for winter and return in spring to open it for another year.

The visit brought back those evenings on the front porch on the old car seat, some of the most relaxed hours of my life: I don’t relax easily, a worry-wart with always “something else” on my mind that intrudes its veil between me and external reality.

My few attempts at meditation drove me batshit; I not only don’t concentrate on my inner being in quite that way, I don’t want to. But there on the porch, with nothing to prove, sitting beside someone who didn’t expect me to prove anything, I learned something about existence that’s really important.

Joey. A good friend, a fine teacher.

Thanks.

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Getting even: You know what’s really behind those Moroccan and Turkish earthquakes? It’s the first stage of Africa’s revenge: “You up there in the Mediterranean and Europe, you spent a millennium enslaving our people? Well, we’re gonna take our whole tectonic plate and cram it up your ass!”