Mom – Page 4 – Here in Van Nuys

Andy Watching the Rain., originally uploaded by Here in Van Nuys.

One of the privileges of spending time at this tree rich home in Woodcliff Lake, NJ was to sit on the front porch and watch the rain.

Since we moved here in 1979, there was always a connection to the outdoors to thrive on. Sitting amidst a lush conglomeration of woods, the house was part of the green shady forest.

The newer, uglier, grosser McMansions that were cruelly bulldozed and grafted onto this once hidden lane, are exposed to the hot sun, and require multiple air-conditioners to cool down their “great rooms” and their seven bedrooms.

But not this 1965 non-air-conditioned Dutch Colonial. Inadequate with its tiny bathrooms and crooked windows, it nonetheless charms me to this day when I unhook the front Dutch doors to let the wet, humid, woodsy air inside. An aged attic fan, noisy and disruptive, struggles to make a blowing breeze blow.

We are selling the house, (and moving the folks to the “Golden State”) and discovered that the old oil tank, disconnected, sits buried underneath the garage windows, and will have to be disinterred and removed.

The way they once built homes in America: were they trying to teach morals in the too small showers, sparse and unlit closets, and by making us go outside to get into the garage? Oil heat, gurgling steam pipes heating the bedrooms. Lest we be too comfortable…..

What builder would even bother these days to sell a house where talkers and dreamers might congregate under the eaves to watch the winds bring in another storm? Those lives we lead now, with shoulders hunched and leaning into the online, what do we know of the outdoors with its wily moods and sudden fits of wind, leaves and the onrush of meteorological madness?

I sat here again today and watched a violent front attack from the West. But it has passed and left, a great performance forgotten but to be repeated again…for eternity.

Batman & Robin 1967, originally uploaded by Here in Van Nuys.

This is a slide I scanned from my parent’s collection of Kodachrome images taken through the years.

This is South Haven, MI in the summer of 1967. Two young people are dressed as Batman and Robin. This was the era of ABC-TV’s “Batman” and the show was quite popular with kids.

The way people are dressed, still adheres to that neat and preppy propriety that hung on through most of that decade. Granted, this is the Midwest, and trends never happen first in this area. So this picture is not emblematic of the “swinging sixties”.

Look at the boy on the lower right. He is wearing a madras plaid pullover shirt. That is something one hardly sees these days.

Some of the girls are wearing sleeveless shirts and the tall one on the left is in white oxford cloth. The men’s hair is Brylcreemed: not short, but neatly parted and combed.

“Robin” wears a gold colored blouse and small ladylike watch and short skirt. She almost looks secretarial in her businesslike attire.

These kids drank whole milk and ate ice cream, but nobody looks particularly fat.

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